


Walking in Each Others Shoes

by LeighAdam



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Celestial interference, Explicit Language, F/M, Family Drama, Season 3 Finale, Threats of Violence, mom and dad, the curse doesn't break
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:21:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 70,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23277757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeighAdam/pseuds/LeighAdam
Summary: Cain's curse didn't break, meaning he is alive and well. He's using his new found appreciation for life to roam Los Angeles and seek revenge. Lucifer tries to pick up the pieces of the Cain aftermath and find his way forward with his Detective who knows. Things of course are never simple when Mum throws wrenchs in the mix though. Chloe is adjusting to her new normal and trying to bring justice to Cain once and for all. Unfortunately for her, a Priest from the Vatican is determined to get Chloe seeing things his way and isn't taking no for an answer. Life is hard enough, but for the Devil and the Detective it's out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire.Starts at season 3 finale with some things borrowed from Season 4 and canon in Season 2 played with. Infrequent Update Schedule but not Abandoned.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Lucifer Morningstar, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 60
Kudos: 170





	1. Chapter 1/Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends, 
> 
> This is a piece I started while staying stuck at home and when I’m not working or doing online classes. Hopefully it helps someone else be a little less bored. I haven't written in a long time, so critiques are always welcome. I hope you enjoy.

The ride back from the warehouse from hell on Earth had been quiet. Chloe had insisted on taking him home, which he didn’t really understand but was not in the mood to fight with right now. Her answers to the multiple three-letter agencies that had descended on the warehouse following the large amount of gunfire had been the ones they had gone with. Something about “my angel wings stopped the armor piercing bullets” had led them to dismiss him. They’d been told to go home, there would be an investigation of course, but a nice fellow from the FBI had assured him not to worry. Apparently, they hadn’t been the only ones watching Cain, and the fellow had been less careful than he thought. A tech had happily explained to him how facial recognition worked and how they had been tracking the man’s every move, but he privately thought that was more Ella’s domain.

With promises to send everything they had and leaving the multiple Government agents to duke out jurisdiction, Lucifer and Chloe had been unceremoniously dismissed as ‘just cops’ and told they would no longer be needed. Of course, there had been assurances they would be given some credit for bringing down a man on multiple most-wanted lists, a career making bust for any normal cop.

Normal was such an odd word. Everyone knew what it meant and yet it was hard to explain. But he was not it. And for a very tiny moment, he was almost sad that he wasn’t. Sad he and Chloe couldn’t leave victoriously, walk back into the precinct to thunderous applause and be fought over by a number of agencies. He’d seen the agents at the scene rush to give Chloe their business card, adding in if she was ever looking for a career change to not hesitate in calling them. He’d gotten fewer business cards, but as some fellow from a four-letter agency that worked with the US military put it, he had a gift. The thought made him snort in amusement. Only the military could consider making people spill their guts and come out without visible scars a gift.

“What’s funny.” The first two words she’d spoken directly to him since leaving the scene. She’d refused to really look at him, probably afraid his other half would spring up if she made eye contact. She wasn’t asking but he didn’t really mind. If it made her feel more in control of the situation, well then, she could order him around.

If she’d told him to jump his only response would be to ask how high.

“Something one of the agent people said to me. He offered me a job”

“You going to take it.” It was supposed to be a question, but it didn’t come out as one. She still refused to take her eyes off the highway. It hurt, more than the bullets in his feathers did. He wasn’t sure why it hurt just yet, that was for Linda to figure out, but it did.

“No.” There it was, an opportunity. To address the very large elephant in the car. “I like where I am.”

No reaction. Even her face didn’t move. If he hadn’t known for a fact she was human he would have questioned the stillness. For all her talk of hating it, the woman was a phenomenal actress. No emotion slipped through unless she wanted it to. And right now she wanted to not show him anything. Not even a hint.

The silence ruled the rest of their ride. Lucifer found himself at a loss on what to do. For someone who prided on having seen and done everything humanity had to offer and the inability to shut up, he found himself in a place where he didn’t know. And he didn’t like it.

“Detective,” he turned to look at her, noticing maybe for the first time how her hands gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white. “Please say something.”

Their car lurched to the side and it took him a moment to realize she was pulling over. They stopped uncomfortably hard, the seat-belt and sudden shock of the seat meeting his back causing a small involuntary cry of pain. She sighed, and it felt like disappointment. Her eyes were closed, hands still on the wheel and she made no movement to look over at him.

“Are you hurt.”

So many ways to answer that question. He knew what she meant, or thought he did, but there were so many loopholes he could use here. Fine, seeing as he was not currently hurt in the face. Very not fine if he decided to make her question refer to how he felt and yes if he took the question as it was phrased, which he took to mean “are you bleeding anywhere?”

“A little.” He answered, going with being honest and what she meant. The thought of her momentarily fussing over him was nice but would not be worth the sigh and glare he’d probably get when she discovered he was referring to his feelings. “I might bleed a little on your seats” he continued, trying to dance around the W-word. He was doing horribly. “I put them away but won’t be able to use them anytime soon.”

“Them” and now it was his turn to sigh. Of course she wouldn’t play along with the pronoun game.

“My wings.” The sharp intake of breath from the other side of the car told him all he needed to know. He wasn’t just avoiding the elephant in the car, he was the elephant in the car.

“Do you need medical attention.” She was actually looking at him now, and the cracks in her tough exterior were showing but only to someone who knew what to look for. She had circles under her eyes from the entire situation keeping her up at night, even before the celestial element got involved. Her hair and clothes were covered in white powder that had been kicked up during the fight. Her ponytail was slightly askew and missing some pieces of hair and she was looking at him in a way that suggested she was as tired as he felt.

“No.” Going again with the most honest answer. “Not that they’d know what to do with me anyway” he tried to joke, but it fell flat. She stared at him, almost like she had the first time they met when she didn’t seem to know what to make of him. ”Just got to get the bullets out, pull out some feathers and not fly anywhere for a while and I’ll be right as rain.”

That had been the wrong move. She stared at him even more at a loss for words than before, and he hated it. He felt like an animal in a zoo, a particularly awful zoo. She tried to say something, stopping herself from speaking after her mouth had formed the words. He could hear Linda in the back of his head, reminding him the reality of his existence was a lot to process and he needed to be patient and let her lead. Patience had never been one of his strong suits. Maybe that was why it was a virtue.

Their awkward moment had been spared from continuing its miserable existence by the jingling of her cellphone, the vibrations making an odd buzzing sound as it rang against the cupholder. She’d jumped, startled and he hated it. Linda had been jumpy around him for months, even more so after her encounter with his mother. Would it take that long for Chloe? Longer because instead of just seeing the face and the wings she’d watched him stick a knife in a human and enjoy it? The ringing felt like forever before she snatched it out of the holder, as if she had expected him to make a grab for it. “Decker.” All business and with it her face slid back to it’s neutral expression. He inwardly groaned, just when he was starting to get somewhere.

There were a couple “how is that possible”s “mhmm”s and “okay”s and it ended with a “of course, we’ll call you back if we hear anything”. He’d learned it was not polite to eavesdrop on her conversations so he had made a point to look out the window, pretending to have a fascination with the highway’s concrete barrier. It looked how he felt, banged up and despite having numerous marks on it from being hit with cars still standing.

He was incredibly curious but wasn’t about the start pushing. She clicked the phone off, set it back in his proper place and looked over at him. Her eyes closed a long moment and she took a steadying breath. Again.

“That was the FBI” she bit her lip and he could almost see the wheels turning in her head. “An alive Marcus Pierce attacked their coroner and took off with their van after forcing their people out.”

Damn it. He was supposed to be dead dead this time. Cain’s plan to get his curse back hadn’t worked, the mark was gone, and he had been most definitely dead after Lucifer had driven Mazikeen’s blade in his sternum. Cain’d been dead when all the agents from every agency double checked again to make sure they were right and the Sinnerman was in fact, dead.

It had been a mistake not personally delivering him to hell. A sick twisted version of Amenadial taking Charlotte to Heaven. How ironic it was that his hatred of the place was what caused their current predicament. If he had just heralded Cain to hell like he was probably supposed to, there would have been no need for Chloe to see his bad side resurface, it could have happened down there where it belonged.

Everything would be different.

“Fuck.” Was all Lucifer had to say. If he hadn’t died by having a Hell-forged blade shoved in him post-mark removal there was only one explanation. His Dad didn’t want him dead; Cain’s punishment was not over, and it was all a cruel joke.  
He couldn’t help it, he stared to laugh, and she stared at him with some mixture of fear and confusion all wrapped into one. Not that he was in a position to make her feel any better.

“Dad took his mark off but kept him cursed anyway” Saying it out loud made it funnier because it was that or he was hysterical. And while Lucifer Morningstar was many things, he was not hysterical. Because the statement meant so many things, that dear old Dad was actively taking part in their situation, and the entire endeavor on Cain’s end had been for nothing. Lucifer had tried to help him achieve mortality for nothing. Lucifer had started to believe that maybe the roles could be changed or that being cast in his Father’s story was an option and there was a way to break free for nothing. He’d shown who he truly was to Chloe, angel and devil, there to save her from a man trying to kill them both all wrapped into one package only for nothing.

He wasn’t sure when the laughs turned into sobs and desperate gulps of air. He tried to explain, between his entire body betraying him. “He wasn’t allowed to die as punishment for killing his brother. So, he tried to become better and tried to use you to do it and lost his mark. But he decided he liked power better so tried to get it back but couldn’t but could” Talk about word vomit. She was probably more confused now than she was earlier. He couldn't find it in him to fix that at the moment.

He buried his face in his hands and tried to will himself into calming down. It wasn’t working.

Well played Dad. Well played.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chloe and Lucifer arrive at the penthouse and have an unexpected guest.

Chloe had learned a long time ago and very early in life that life was not fair. It wasn’t fair her Mother never took her to do things like her friend Amanda’s mom did and it wasn’t fair that her Dad had to work on her 6th birthday and miss her birthday party. It was certainly not fair her Dad’s killer had remained unknown for so long, unfair that she had to take some of the fall out of Dan being dirty professionally and it was most certainly not fair that between the two people in the car, Lucifer was the one who got to have the mental breakdown.

Honestly, she had just discovered a huge portion of her life over the past few years and especially the past couple months were totally not what they seemed and he was the one who got to hyperventilate and go on about his Dad?

Yeah the World was definitely not fair. Apparently it had been designed that way.

Once again it would be Chloe who was there to fix things. Things she knew nothing about. Things that had been kept from her for some stupid reason.

“Lucifer. Hey Lucifer.” She tried to get his attention but he wasn’t having it. She was almost afraid he’d switch back into whatever it was that had been in the warehouse if she startled him. If she scared him would he hurt her? He’d seemed so out of it in the warehouse, like a completely different person, some side she hadn’t ever seen. She’d heard him ramble on about it before, just didn’t think he was talking literally. Was it a Jykell and Hyde kind of deal, or more like Venom from Spiderman?

Chloe finally gave up trying to wave her hands in his face and the various hand gestures she used to try to get his attention. Taking in a deep breath she grabbed him by his shoulder and gently shook him to get his attention.

The result was immediate. The rambling stopped and was replaced by a hiss of pain. “Bloody Hell Detective.” She now had his full attention, but there was no trace of red in his face. He looked irritatingly just like his usual self, hair fixed, clean shaven and with long lashes more than one model would happily kill him over. “Just what was that for?”

“You going to stop freaking out.” It was supposed to come out a question but came out harsher than she meant it. He scooted closer to his window, not even realizing he was inching away from her even when he looked like he was trying to mold himself with the side door. The sigh came up and out before she could even control it. Of course, he would take it personally.

She remembered a seminar she had taken early on in the Police Academy, about how some people react to things differently, all trauma was valid and everyone is human and displays it differently. He certainly wasn’t human, but he still was upset. If anything Pierce being dead hurt him more than it hurt her. Just more proof she had done the right thing in ending that.

She pulled her hand back, and turned the car back on to slide back into the flow of traffic. Now was clearly not the time to try and manage things, now was time to take action. “They said they would call Dan and he has Trixie at his place. Ella is going to go stay with a friend and call Linda on the way.” Crisis mode. That was what she was good at. When the world around her was quite literally on fire Chloe could be counted on to be rational and deal with fallout later.

He nodded, having moved back closer to the middle of the car but only to avoid resting his back on the seat. He was trying to hide it but she had seen him sitting shotgun in the cruiser enough times to know he wasn’t sitting normally. He’d probably under-exaggerated how much he hurt to not get fussed at.

“Do we need to tell your brother?” She asked before realizing it was probably a stupid question and he probably thought it was a stupid question too. Amenadiel had to be an angel, which explained why they didn’t actually look alike but behaved like siblings. Angels could see everything going on right? Couldn’t they see everything up in heaven?

“I’ll tell him.” Lucifer was oddly quiet without the usual enthusiasm. She’d hurt his feelings more than she had thought. “He’d want to know”

“Right.” How was he going to tell him? Chloe didn’t see him move for his phone, maybe angels were telepathic? But that wouldn’t make sense given how often they disagreed over stuff and yelled at each other. They were a perfect example of family dysfunction and bad communication skills. Shouldn’t being able to communicate back and forth mentally get rid of all that?

Maybe there was a secret messenger service? After all that’s what Chloe had thought angels were for the few times she went to Christmas services with Dan’s family.

The ride got quiet again, and for some reason the traffic on the highway was clearer than usual. Almost as if someone wanted them to get to their destination quickly. Maybe someone did. The huge weight of what Chloe had discovered hadn’t had time to fully hit her yet, but it was coming fast the closer she got back to Lux. How many things in her life had been because someone in Lucifer’s family had intervened? Was meeting Lucifer an actual accident? Did that mean Lucifer’s family caused Delilah to die for them to meet? Did that make her an accessory to her death?

Chloe was shocked to find herself pulling in the parking garage behind Lux, into a spot reserved for her, having been too engrossed in trying to guess if anything in her life had been interfered with. She understood now why Lucifer always complained about it, it was incredibly unsettling. She clicked the car off and sighed, grateful she hadn’t had to look for parking. Lucifer had insisted she get her own spot and she remembered rolling her eyes at him and telling him she wouldn’t be around often enough to need it. Had that been real too?

The locks unclicked and Lucifer slowly got out of the car, lacking his usual grace. “Right, now that you’ve got me home, you can go now.” And with that declaration he shut the door and went off towards the elevator. It was meant as a dismissal but it sparked anger instead.

Oh hell no. He did not get to walk away from this without giving her some answers. Pierce was walking around still and he knew more than he was telling. Or he had been telling and she just hadn’t been listening so she needed a refresher. Either way, they were not done here. She followed behind him, slamming her door and then smashing the already lit elevator button. He looked over at her, eyes still a bit puffy from earlier and he seemed even tenser than before as though he thought she was going to attack him.

“We are not done here.” She told him, letting some of the hurt that he’d been hiding from her seep out. “You are going to explain everything while we figure out how to get the bullets out of your wings.”

“What makes you think I have a first aide kit?” He was testing her surely. See what she would do, push her buttons until she backed off, or he just enjoyed being annoying. Her eyes narrowed, fixing him with what Trixie had called the stare. Two could play this game. She wasn’t backing down, not after the day she had gone through.

“You have enough weird sex in your penthouse surely you have a first aide kit.” If this had been any other case she would have gotten a laugh and a comment about how she was more than welcome to try out things she would need the kit for or to play nurse. But it wasn’t, things had drastically shifted in just a few hours and he just looked at her oddly and without any smartass comment. Suddenly unsure of herself she added “You do have one don’t you? Because if not my car has one and I can-“

Ahh saved by the elevator ding. Thank God. No wait, maybe not thank God. Oh fuck it.

“I do have one upstairs.” He conceded, stepping into the elevator while she stepped in behind him. She moved to the other side of the elevator, careful not to box him in or block his route of escape. He seemed sad now that he was back and thinking without the panic. It couldn’t have been over Pierce, Lucifer had been more than happy to shove a knife in and wait until the man stopped moving. That was going to stay in her head a long time. No it was something else. Maybe it was about his Dad not letting Pierce stay dead, he had been unable to stop ranting about it in the car. But wouldn’t that be anger not sadness?

The first elevator ride into the building was just like most of the car ride. Long and silent. Lucifer was tapping away at his side, a nervous tick she had discovered. He had to keep his hands busy, maybe why he was so good at the piano. He’d probably been playing it since the thing had been invented, Chloe realized. Though she’d ask him over and over how old he was she had always ignored his answers of “millions and billions of years”, “in my concept of time or your concept of time?” and “of legal drinking age”. The thought he had been serious had never occurred to her before.

“When was the Piano invented?” she asked, catching him by surprise. His brow wrinkled and he seemed confused by her question. “You’re old enough to have been there when it happened” she explained, hoping to clear up confusion “so when was that?”

“That’s what you’re going with?” his face had dropped the doom and gloom and he lit up like he always did when he found something fascinating. “You finally know about everything and your first question is about instrument history. Usually people want to know about Hitler.”

“No my first question is why didn’t you show me earlier.” She smiled, slipping back into the easy banter they’d developed. “My second question is about Pianos. And do you play the Fiddle?” she teased, watching him grow moderately annoyed at what she was referring to.

“I don’t play the violin anymore but not because someone beat me in a contest. I simply grew tired of the instrument” Ah yes of course. Lucifer may insist he wasn’t responsible for the sins of mankind but he did exemplify vanity.

“Before or after a contest?” she inquired and his pained groan told her she was right. It made Chloe giggle a little, the seriousness of their situation slipping away. There were so many opportunities that arose out of this that she was sure he’d never imagined with. Did the Devil wear a lot of Prada, did he enjoy Georgia, why were they called Deviled eggs?

Their second elevator ride was a lot happier than the first one. The tension or whatever it was seemed to have broken and he seemed lighter somehow. Like a giant weight had been taken off him and he felt better. For her part Chloe was doing a good job keeping it together on the outside, playing along but inwardly panicking, something that future-Chloe would have to deal with. Her own mental breakdown was barreling along somewhere in her mind but it wasn’t at the forefront yet.

The soft ding let them into the penthouse, the setting sun in the sky casting shadows everywhere. Chloe felt like she was seeing it again for the first time, the wall at the end having actually probably been from where he said it had, the books on the shelf in all kinds of languages not just novelty collector items to impress guests but things he’d probably actually read when they came out. The wall of alcohol and his ability to go through it suddenly making a lot more sense. It felt like she had missed all these things that had been staring her right in the face.

And here she thought she’d been a good detective.

There was a slight rustling noise, both of them hearing it at the same time. Chloe instantly reached for her gun and found an empty holster, her own gun having been bagged as evidence. She went to grab something off the bar, a corkscrew as it turned out, anything to use as a weapon, Lucifer instantly tensing up, looking for the source and ready to strike.

“Well that’s no way to great your mother.” The voice was familiar but she couldn’t quite place it. From around the corner a woman appeared, and Chloe wasn’t quite sure what to do. If she hadn’t seen what she had today, Chloe would have insisted there was no way this woman had ever had kids let alone ones old enough to be Lucifer.

The women looked like a female version of Lucifer had collided with a perfume advertisement. Same high cheekbones, arched brows that looked impeccable, her big brown eyes lacked Lucifer’s warmth but commanded attention the same way his did. She was naturally gorgeous in the way only people born that way could be, not even LA’s finest plastic surgeons could create something to compare. She was incredibly tall for a woman, Chloe felt dwarfed by her and Chloe was not tiny. Her mother had cried at it hurting her chances of getting lead roles. The white dress swished around her, delicately draping and looking elegant in only the way expensive fabrics and thin women can pull off. She was smiling, but when she looked at Chloe the smile did not quite reach her eyes. There was disapproval maybe, something there.

Lucifer sensed it too, moving slowly between the two of them, never taking his eyes off the woman in front of them.

Shit she isn’t human either, the thought hitting her like a freight train made Chloe feel silly for grabbing a corkscrew as a weapon. She could probably turn her into a bug and squish her, or make her stop existing entirely if she felt like it.

“Mum, I thought you went to your own universe” Lucifer took a step closer, cautiously. “What are you doing here?”

Her attention off Chloe made her release the breath Chloe didn’t even realize she was holding in. 

“Your father had other plans.” Came the breezy reply, as though that was totally normal. Maybe for them it was. She remembered Lucifer mentioning that his own parents weren’t together and that it had been ugly, after Trixie had asked him about his family. He’d clammed up on the details, saying it had happened after he had left the house.

What did an ugly divorce look like between celestial beings? Chloe didn’t think she wanted to know.

“Chloe, you don’t look happy to see me.” The woman admonished. “It’s not because of what happened with Linda is it? Because that was an accident.” Lucifer rolled his eyes and muttered something Chloe didn’t understand, which caused them to switch into a different language to argue.

Chloe just remembered Charlotte being incredibly confused after seemingly having gone after Linda at them finding her at the Pier. Charlotte had shifted entirely after that, a cool and holy-than-thou demeanor replaced by a woman desperate to change the world for the better.

“You just don’t look how I remember.” Chloe managed to get out, stopping their conversation and causing them to both stare at her. Could this woman read her thoughts? “You look a lot like Lucifer.” She added, using an old trick she’d learned when dealing with parents of other kids. Hopefully it worked and got the unsettling gaze off. 

The woman, Goddess, something preened. “His father designed a lot of that. But he gets his temper from me.” She said, smiling sweetly. The smile did not reach her eyes this time either. Chloe nodded along, warning received. Got it.

“Chloe, please go grab that first aide kit from under the sink in the bath.” Lucifer requested, stepping out of her way and towards the couches. “Mum why don’t you sit down, I’ll pour you a drink and you can tell me all about it. Who else knows about your arrangement?”

Pleased with Chloe’s dismissal, not that Chloe was fighting it, his mother sauntered over to the couches, curling up in a corner section where Chloe usually sat if she was over. Something she probably did on purpose. At the bar Lucifer was asking if she had a preference for anything and his mother replied the name of some fancy sounding cocktail.

The area under the bathroom sink was surprisingly bare, Chloe expected something more. Cleaning supplies maybe, Orgy throwing kits, something. There was just a small toilet brush, a few boxes of things like bars of soap and qtips and the first aide kit that was covered in dust. The plastic packaging was still on the thing and though the things inside were in date, they wouldn’t be for much longer.

Looking in the mirror and being able to see the rest of the penthouse put things in perspective again and the reality of the situation threatened to overtake her again. Breathe she instructed herself. Just breathe.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she noticed she had several missed calls from Dan. “Hi Dan.” She answered, trying to be as quiet with the wretched plastic as possible. “They called you right?”

“Fuck yes they called me Chloe.” Ah there it was. When Dan was upset he usually ended up verbally lashing out. She knew he didn’t mean it and he knew she knew he didn’t mean it but would apologize later. “How are you so calm. You have a zombie for an ex-fiance. Ella is freaking out.” Not just Ella it seemed like.

“Dan you know what I’m like.” And it was true, one of the many things that had crumbled their marriage. Chloe did not want to deal with things as they happened or in the heat of the moment while Dan needed to get all his energy about the matter out at once. The sigh on the other end told her he was thinking the same thing too. “Besides, he has so many people out looking for him now and they’re using face recognition software at airports and stuff. They’ll find him” Because she didn’t know what to do with herself if she didn’t. That and there were more than humans looking.

“That doesn’t matter Chloe, he could be coming back. He has unfinished business here, he won’t just leave it.” Again they both knew what unfinished business Dan was referring to. A smart man would run, deal with his losses and disappear. Chloe’s gut told her that wasn’t happening. Pierce could die over and over and over. He wasn’t going to stop coming, no matter what contingency they came up with. They had to catch him and stick him in a cage somewhere or something. Would he even die of natural causes or just unnatural ones?

“Pierce is smart.” Chloe tried, “He knows if he comes back, we will be ready for him.” Chloe willed the words she was saying into being true. He would pay, for Charlotte and every other innocent person he’d hurt. Chloe’s brain helpfully brought up how many years they had proof of humans existing and just how many suspected deaths they had tried to connect him to during his short stint in Los Angeles alone. There had to be thousands, maybe even millions, Chloe had never been one to do mental math. “Besides, we aren’t alone in this anymore Dan. I have you and Trixie, Lucifer, Ella and now multiple other people who know what he is. He won’t get away with this.” If only that confidence translated into reality.

“Do you need someone to stop by your apartment? I can take the couch?” Dan offered, something he had never done when they were married. It was kind of funny when you thought about it, Neither of them had been ready to be married and they worked better after the divorce than they had before it.

“I’m with Lucifer.” Chloe replied, letting him know it wasn’t needed. “If she wants to go over that’s fine but Lucifer got a bit banged up and needs to be supervised.”

Dan chuckled. “Is he trying to mix pain medication with alcohol to see what after tastes he gets or something?”

“Or something.” Chloe replied, figuring it was easier to let Dan think that “I’ll call Trixie around her bedtime okay and Ella sometime tonight? Don’t forget to eat dinner Dan.”

“Ice cream for dinner, got it Chloe. Call you later.” His comment caused giggles in the background and she sighed, relieved that charade was over. Was it even a charade? It felt like she was lying to him, even if it was lying by omission. She remembered Maze telling her that, then her brain helpfully reminded her Maze was a demon and probably had actually done all the things she talked about with knives. And she’d left her kid with her multiple times. Clearly Chloe was out of the running for even Okay-Mom of the year.

“Detective, do you want a drink too?” Lucifer called from the bar, a slight strain in his happy tone. Shit his mom was still here. His mom who was the ex-wife of the man who had created everything. She pushed the thought out again. One thing at a time Decker.

“Yes please.” She called back, finally ripping off the rest of the plastic and a bit of the sticker of the first aide kit. “I got the first aide kit.”

She brought it back into the kitchen, and started to go through it’s contents. She had received some first aide training of course but here she was totally out of her element. Did she pull the feathers out? Cut them? Was dealing with a wound in his wings the same was dealing with a wound on his person?

There was a cup set on the counter for her and she forced herself to sip it. It didn’t taste like alcohol but it probably had an insane amount of it. Could angels get drunk? She’d seen him drink amounts that would kill a normal person. Kill a human. She pushed the thought down and swallowed the rest of her glass. That was a future-Chloe problem.

“You don’t look injured.” Lucifer’s mom was eyeing her carefully, almost as though she was suspicious of Chloe. And Chloe wasn’t, not really anyway. The vest had taken the damage and while she was left with some heavy bruising she was fine. The paramedic at the scene had told her how lucky she had gotten, apparently the bullet should have gone all the way through. Lucky right.

“It’s not for her, it’s for me.” Lucifer interrupted, sensing the tension in the room.

“Well you should have said so! Show me.”

At that command Lucifer became the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It quite literally took her breath away. The copy-cat wings had been lovely but he had been right in that they were no comparison to the real things. They reminded her of stars, pure white and glowing faintly. He’d always joked about getting her to let him take her breath away but she’d had no idea he was being literal. Like he had been about a lot of things it seemed. Even with feathers askew from being riddled with bullets and a wound near his left shoulder the wings were perfect. He was perfect.

“Mum it’s fine.” He tried to bargain with the Goddess but she was having none of it. Fussing over him in their language that sounded like music, pushing things back into place regardless of Lucifer’s wincing, it reminded her of Moms at auditions she had been to as a child. “Mum really, it’s not a big-“ his protesting was cut off by the yelp of pain that came with having the bullet extracted from the area that joined his wing with his shoulder. His mother held the bloody bullet in her hands, glaring at it as if it had personally wronged her.

“You were saying?” She asked, ignoring the look Lucifer was giving her, as she settled back into the couch and picked up her drink again, swirling the ice in her glass. Just as quickly as she had been annoyed at the offending bullet, she was back on to something else, asking him something in their language.

“It’s rude to talk in languages not everyone in the room can understand.” Lucifer replied, ignoring whatever he had been asked, which earned him an eyeroll.

“Chloe, come here and sit with us.” His mother ordered, patting the seat next to her on the leather sofa and Chloe found her feet moving on their own accord. Chloe tried to stop, preferring to keep the bar and other objects between them but at any attempt to stop or even slow down pain shot up her legs, enough to make her wince. Lucifer was yelling, again in the language she didn’t understand, not that his mother seemed bothered. Chloe’s entire body felt on edge as it deposited her next to the Goddess, adrenaline telling her to run but being unable to.

“Are you done?” The Goddess asked him, bored sounding. “Because we have a lot to discuss and I’m sure Chloe here has a lot of questions.” Her hand was on Chloe’s shoulder and Chloe for the first time felt she understood the desire for the floor to open and swallow her up. Breathe Chloe, she reminded her brain, feeling as though she was on the verge of losing it for the umpteenth time today. Just breathe.

“Don’t bring her into this.”

The Goddess smiled. “Too late. Your Dad started it when he created her. Take it up with him. Now please sit.”

Chloe noticed she asked him, instead of just ordering him too. Did orders work on angels? Was this a free will thing? Lucifer sunk on the opposite couch, still tense.

“Now. That wasn’t so hard was it?” the Goddess beamed at them both, ignoring Lucifer’s eye roll and Chloe trying to shift away from her in a way that didn’t cause pain shooting through her body. “Now, to answer your earlier question I was on my way to my own universe when your father wanted to have one last conversation before I left. We kept talking and one thing led to another.”

“And you waited until now to tell me?” Lucifer sounded hurt, not that she could blame him. She knew he never really had any contact with his family, so his parents essentially getting back together and not telling him must hurt a hell of a lot. Would Lucifer get offended by that use of the word hell?

“No honey.” It was honestly frightening how fast this woman, Goddess, moved between moods. Before she had been irritated with Chloe and Lucifer to the point she was ordering them around and pushing their buttons but had shifted in seconds to a caring sounding Mother. If his mom was like this, was his dad the same? Chloe had so many questions. “You’re the first person we’re telling. It’s because of you and your creative interpretation of the deal you made that we even had the opportunity.”

Placated Lucifer leaned back a little, still on edge but less so. He was still paying close attention as though he expected a group of people to jump out and scream gotcha. Maybe he did.

“Besides,” the Goddess continued “We made an important decision that concerns you.”

“Well I can’t wait to hear this one.” Lucifer snapped sarcastically and the grip on Chloe’s shoulder slightly tightened.

“I think you’ve outgrown Hell. He agreed. It’s time for a different role for you.” She sounded so excited, as though she had just delivered the best news. Lucifer looked confused and unsure of what to say first.

“But I still have my face-“ Lucifer started and trailed off, lost in thought. As the full weight of what she said pressed down on him his face changed again, “What new role?”

“Well,” the Goddess started, clearly having hoped he would have celebrated being free from a role he hated first. “It’s not really new. You’ve kind of already been doing it” She stood up, and pulled a sword out of her dress. Ah yes, because space didn’t obey rules for them either. Had she been hiding it the entire time? “Cain didn’t die today so he could feel the full weight of his actions.”

She extended the sword hilt first. It reminded her of the blade Lucifer had insisted was special in design made of a delicate silver metal that sparkled like his wings did. The delicate pattern weaved down the blade. It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. Chloe felt an urge to run from the thing, believing for the first time in Ella’s “bad vibes”. Moving still caused pain and she might as well have been glued to the spot.

“He kept it.” Lucifer’s voice was small, shocked. “I thought he destroyed it when he kicked me out.”

“So did I.” His mother admitted, “But he didn’t. It’s here.” She smiled again, extending the sword farther towards him. “You can take it Lucifer, it doesn’t bite.” She joked, causing a small grin to form on Lucifer’s first. He took the sword, and it was the most careful Chloe had ever seen him with something. It fit him somehow, beautiful and terrifying. It was clearly made for him, as it fit in his hands perfectly. He kept looking at it, turning it over in his hands as if he was making sure over and over that it was really there.

“What’s going to happen to hell?” Lucifer asked, suddenly concerned.

“Haven’t decided yet.” The goddess replied breezily, brushing off the question. Chloe wasn’t sure if she was just being genuine or purposefully evasive. Chloe studied her face but wasn’t able to find any answers there. The Goddess’s bright brown eyes studied her right back, knowing what she was doing. Lucifer was still distracted “Have any suggestions?” Chloe wasn’t sure who the question was for and just decided not answering was the best course of action. She leaned back into her seat, willing herself to become smaller to escape the gaze and the woman smiled, pleased.

“A few, I need time to think.” Lucifer admitted still preoccupied with the sword and what it meant. He was normally complicated for Chloe to read but he was an open book at the moment. Shock and awe, questioning everything he knew, extremely emotional. “He really kept it” He repeated mostly to himself, still turning the blade over in his hands. Chloe knew what it meant to him, forgiveness. Redemption. A second chance.

“Amenadiel will be returning to join you shortly. I trust you’ll be able to tell him.” Chloe’s brow furrowed, surely she would tell her own children herself? “The two of you were the first to really believe I was changing, and your father and I aren’t sure how to tell your siblings yet. Their hate runs deep.” She seemed sad at that and Chloe found her doubt fading and herself sympathizing. Lucifer’s family was first class in dysfunction, it made total sense she wanted to sort things out before causing a major shift like that. 

Lucifer absentmindedly nodded, still preoccupied with the sword. Smiling at his behavior, the Goddess pulled out a silver shield, matching the sword and gently placed it next to Chloe. “You can get up now and don’t ever hurt my son like that again” she whispered, only loud enough for Chloe to hear her. Chloe swallowed nervously, nodding to indicate she understood. Not that she planned on getting re-engaged to the world’s most prolific killer. Then in a blink the Goddess disappeared from Chloe’s view, the rustling of her dress the only indication she had left. The tension in her body fell out of her body all at once and Chloe felt herself sinking deep into the couch cushions.

“What the hell just happened?” Chloe asked Lucifer, who was still a bundle full of bursting happiness. He looked back at her, taking her in as if he was seeing her again for the first time today. He burst out into a wide toothy grin and she could only recall a few occasions were he actually was that open with his feelings.

“Everything’s changed.” He laughed out, full of joy. “I’ll explain everything, all of it promise, but first you need a shower and I need a drink.” He pulled her up from the sofa by her hands and guided her towards the bathroom. “I’ll grab you some clothes to change into, there’s towels in the linen closet” he explained, pushing her into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. He was singing something, again in a language she didn’t really understand but it sounded musical on it’s own, like a more beautiful choir than the one that had been at the Catholic services she had attended with Dan.

Chloe turned the knob in his giant shower, fiddling with the knobs to figure out how the damn thing worked. She was ready to dump off all the nagging doubts and fears with the grime and send it down the drain. For the first time that day, she felt as though things weren’t so far gone.

Hope her mind told herself. She now had hope that things weren’t going to turn out terribly. Chloe giggled, remembering a poem from High School English. Hope did indeed have feathers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still playing with points of view and the different characters, any comments on them are appreciated. Thanks for reading, it means a lot. Also, I don't have a beta reader and while I try to catch mistakes there may still be a few in there.


	3. Chapter 2

Lucifer felt like a bird or other small creature distracted by something shiny. He had set up a drink for himself, taken it and made another, along with making another drink for Chloe. She’d been holding it together remarkably, something he was and wasn’t surprised by. He’d always known she was an extraordinary woman but to be able to take in what she had and not have her brain made of goo by now, that was something else. It was enough to make him feel regret for not telling her sooner, so much could be different.

But he’d made more headway in the past now eight or so hours than he felt like he had in a long time. Things finally were out in the open for what they were, the terrible and awful things that they were.

She’d shut the door with just a little more force than needed but maybe the door simply wasn’t cooperating. And the click of the lock, well that had been standard in their relationship ever since he first paid her a visit to her lovely home. Not that he could blame her in hindsight but really, was she absolutely thinking clearly if she thought a wood door and a knob-lock was going to stop him. Not that she would ever have a need to stop him, his mind quickly corrected. It was the idea that was hurtful.

But today was maybe the first day Lucifer wasn’t going to sulk and lick his wounds after a day with defeat. Because after all, he’d won. Well not yet, not technically but the point still stood. Cain may have won the battle but he, Lucifer Morningstar was going to win the war. Whatever that meant. Chloe had not reacted well but she wasn’t ready to go into an insane asylum nor did he think she would play phone tag like Linda. Detective Chloe Decker was all about going after things bigger and scarier than she was head on, face first, sometimes without regards to consequences.

Why should his face be any different a thing to conquer? After everything she should have no weird long and awkward adjustment period right? She’d seen hints, things she couldn’t quite explain, sometimes seemed to take what he was telling her into actual consideration. Maybe she had been expecting the wings, that would have been preferable actually but hey, she’d seen it absolutely all and had not decided to flee the country or try to stab him with something pointy. Or shoot him again.

Of all the humans here on Earth, she’d actually been one of the best reactions to be honest. So it really stood to reason that there would be no problem. Right?

The little worming doubts that had existed in some dark and decrepit corner of his brain finally found a kink in the new armor he’d managed to pull together in the last hour or so. Linda had been encouraging him to identify those thoughts, and reason through them instead of just reacting.

But they all flooded in at once. _Was Mum lying, if Dad really wanted me to take my old job back why didn’t he deliver it personally, why wasn’t I to tell anyone else because if I’d been given an apology I should be able to reach out again right?_

_What happens after Cain is finished? Do I leave Los Angeles? Is this new-found permission a way to cut my own freedom? Is the sword even the same one from back then, or this just another manipulation._

Even deeper still, the old buttons of previous thought behaviors stirred. Mother and Father had never had anything good when they brought presents. In fact, getting presents from either of them always came with complicated, unknown instructions, numerous strings attached and a lot of headache. They weren’t even really gifts as gifts were supposed to bring joy. Every gift his father had ever given him came with a weight to bear. Why should his half-assed apology attempt be any different?

Beautiful wings to spread light and be forever excluded by his band of older siblings who resented one of the babies of the family being chosen to light the heavens. Being a part of one of the greatest parts of creation was worth the doors of that bond forever becoming closed to him. It was easy for his older siblings to agree Lucifer was asking rebellious traitorous things and should be cast out, it was harder for his younger siblings to whom he’d actually felt like family.

A beautiful sword and shield, handcrafted by his father and designed with love by his mother, an object to strike fear into humanity and be the subject of nightmares. Angels were the greatest predator of them all of course and none of them could have ever stood a chance. Sure death was a reality for him now but the facts remained unchanged. No matter what Maze said, Lucifer always let the Detective catch the bad guy because it was her that should be making the arrest as a police officer, not because he didn't want to break a nail or some other cute girly thing. The fact remained that with a sword in hand and determination, it would be difficult for him to be stopped. Hell, it could cut through the Silver’s Cities Gates if he felt the desire to do so.

His own face, his dark talents at their full potential ready and waiting to go were the things that made him the most hated among all. No one cared to remember his siblings or his mother except maybe the truly devout. He simply, as casting agents would say, looked the part, and therefore it became his. It had been more of a punishment after falling, cast to be among demons it was probably fitting he looked the way he had but was a gift nonetheless. It provided a physical conduit for all his dark talents to surface. It had been how he survived those first few centuries in Hell, provided proof he wasn’t an angel from above and therefore not a threat to the demons in charge at the time.

Hell even was considered a gift, mostly by humans who tried to humanize his father. “No good father would do such a thing” they cried to themselves “It simply must be a burden for Lucifer to bear, a testing of his abilities, designed to strengthen and humble him”. Because the alternative was one they could not and would not comprehend. If only going from a nothing with a demon outcast for a friend to the very top of the heap was worth something to them. It hadn’t been for his father or any of his siblings. He’d claimed hell as his own, turned it into something to be proud of, a working and running society where demons faired relatively well, kept the bloodshed down and the worst of humanity paid for their crimes, all from a fire pit of chaos. None of that had mattered.

Liquor had a delightful burn when the Detective was around. He’d once tried to describe it to a bemused drunk college student who simply told him that was what alcohol really felt like. He could get drunk in her presence yes, that was going to be the key. Humans always had a drink before long and difficult conversations. Steeling nerves or something like it.

Lucifer’s confidence did not match up with his optimized thoughts of earlier. The Euphoria of his mother's message had come crashing down with doubts, burdens and uncertainties. They’d never even made a deal, something his father had surely been amused by. They always made deals, it had been their thing. When Lucifer first set out in learning to be an angel, at the time wanting nothing more than his parent's approval, insisting on the truth and never breaking a word given to someone, his father had been the only one to indulge him in the making of deals, mostly doing things to irritate his mother now in hindsight. Its absence felt wrong somehow and yet, maybe he wasn’t simply forgiven enough? Of course that had to be it. His Father couldn't just let him have a moment, he had to push Lucifer into apologizing for Lucifer's own actions also. 

Cain’s test had been the Detective right? To see if he stayed true to changing when his mark disappeared or if he continued to double down on the ways that got him stuck with that mark in the first place. Cain had chosen to double down but you can never beat the house in this kind of thing so down Cain will go.

Cain hadn’t at all been a cruel reminder of Fate and his father pulling playstrings, Cain’d been a message. One second chance, do not blow it. The ability to choose his own Fate this time, to really be able to make the choice to go after Cain not just because it benefited himself, but because it helped other people like Charlotte was just in fact a bonus. If Lucifer could do this, his father would have to apologize to him, recognize that Lucifer wasn't in fact what he had poked and prodded him into being. That he was better, more than any box his Father tried to put him in. Father would have to accept it this time. 

His thoughts resettled on Charlotte Richards. How far could he go? Could he see her? Sneak around Dad and Gabriel at the gates and play messenger for her and Detective Douche? He’d become rather tolerable lately, having developed a lot into his own. Dan'd become a good cop completely of his own right, because he worked hard and wanted it, not because someone gave it to him on a plate to mask other nefarious dealings like they had before. How far did this new limit reach? He’d resigned himself to the fact he would truly never see her again, making the loss just as profound to him as it did to the others. But maybe that wasn’t the case, maybe not yet.

Down another drink, and now he would have to pour another one. There were a lot of maybes, what-ifs and uncertainties. Just the way Dad liked it. Down went another, mixed in all the uncertainties.

There was a little hope too, or maybe whatever Miss. Lopez would call faith. Was that what faith was, an idea that things would turn around even in absence of evidence? His father’s followers adored the thing, putting it everywhere. Maybe that’s what it was, a test of his own faith. Or maybe it was actually a cruel joke, hell it wouldn’t be the first time.

The door opened, slowly and recaptured his attention. Probably for the best, he’d gone through more than he should have of the bottle by now anyway while her own sat untouched. He’d have made a joke at their current situation if now had been the time for a joke. Her damp hair was left down, drying into the polyester of the oversized LAPD shirt he had in his linen closet. The shirt had been part of a set, he’d once required a change of clothes and insisted on LAPD issued clothes. So he got a shirt and pair of drawstring pants. He’d whined at the time over not getting the matching sweatshirt and had been told if he had behaved and didn’t get paint spilled all over his suit by a suspect maybe he would have. He had responded that the cheap polyester was punishment enough but she hadn’t bought it at the time.

Lucifer put everything he’d learned from being around Linda after she had found out into practice. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen a human again after they discovered what he was. Had he ever? But thing number one with Linda was distance and his hands being where she could see them. Right then easy enough, keep the bar in between and his hands above it.

It would be easier if she played along. The shock had probably worn off and it seemed like everything had trainwrecked into her head at once. Most people he’d ever met required a day or two to recover after his mother, hell most demons had responded to her poorly enough he’d made it a requirement that any demon who worked with humans had to get through a conversation with his mother first. Father really had made a mistake in not letting her be in charge of hell from the get-go, she’d have been much better at it than he ever could have hoped. She didn’t move any closer, just watched him move around to provide more distance between them.

“I made you a drink, I had assumed you’d need one.” No reaction. This was going to be harder than he’d thought. “I can drink it first, make sure it doesn’t do anything,” he offered and winced internally at her face. Wrong reaction, the thought had clearly not occurred to her until he brought it up. “I have that monstrosity that calls itself wine you insist on drinking over anything better in the refrigerator, maybe that’s a better idea?”

That she took him up on, watching him the entire time she made her way over to the fridge. It honestly hurt his feelings, just a little bit. He knew telling her would not be easy, that was why he had avoided it for so long, for reasons just like this. She looked almost like a cornered animal, tense and ready to take flight at any hint of danger. But how was he supposed to explain that he was probably the safest person on Earth to be with right now, except maybe when Maze was in a loyal mood which she rarely was these days.

It made the corners of his mouth twitch up a bit that she didn’t even bother with the pretense of pouring the wine into a glass, just taking the entire bottle, unscrewing the cap, the monstrosity didn’t get a proper cork, and padding over to the living room, unnaturally walking sideways to keep him in her sightline.

Linda had said this would be very difficult. Lucifer had realized that when she said it of course, hello doctor of course telling a person you’ve grown close to that you are her society’s literal embodiment of evil and all that was wrong in the world was difficult. What Linda had not prepared him for was how much this would hurt and how bloody awkward it felt.

Lucifer had never been uncomfortable in many situations, he thrived on shattering expectations of those around him, being unconventional, not conforming to normal expectations. This felt entirely foreign to him, tightness in his chest, finally grasping the metaphor of butterflies in the stomach, a dry mouth. He knew of course it was nerves but that didn’t make the situation any better, opposite in fact. Lucifer had been noted for being impulsive, everyone had lectured him on not stopping to think things through, but this was entirely different. He truly felt like the fish out of water that he was for the very first time and did not like that particular bit of self-observation one bit.

The Detective had picked the opposite couch his mother had picked out, of course. The Mother of Angels’ display earlier had been more for his benefit than her’s really. She had been telling him to play nice even when she could very well order him to do it.

Ever since he asked for free will his Father had not ordered him to do anything. Father’d stopped ordering everyone per say, instead giving out strongly worded requests as a result of his act of defiance. How fitting it was that one had to be sacrificed so the others had rights to enjoy, even if they were really only in name. Mother however was a completely different story. On Earth before she had tried and failed, unable to take advantage of her full form in order to compel obedience. It was clear she would not hesitate to use it now, even if she was in a good mood and she believed it for her own benefit.

“Are you-“ her voice was quiet, soft, and she sounded almost sad. Maybe she was, and again little dark thoughts crept to the forefront of his mind. She took in a deep breathe, closed her eyes, took a gulp of the grape juice that proclaimed to be wine and began again. “Are you going to sit down?”

“If that’s what you desire then yes.” No eyeroll this time, normally he got one everytime he used the word desire. She’d asked him once why he didn’t use another word and he’d asked her which one to use. She hadn’t been able to give him a good substitute, except that asking people about desires was weird. But here he wasn’t intending to irritate her, rather ask her what she actually wanted from him. Knowing was so much better than not knowing.

For all the time her lovely eyes tracked his movements she didn’t want to focus on his own eyes. Had she seen something in them, something she wasn’t supposed to? Hell was the last place Detective Chloe Decker would go and she would never know that place or he wasn’t Lucifer Moringstar. He simply would not allow it.

He mirrored her position from earlier, gently placing the shield on the floor and then the sword on top, carefully to make sure it was out of his immediate reach. He hadn’t really noticed how much that interaction had shaken her. His mother had that effect unfortunately. They’d seemed to have made headway in the elevator, what was it she had asked about? Oh of course, Pianos.

“The current version of the Piano was invented by a fellow named Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua for the Medici family. The first one he made was in 1700 or so.” Lucifer had adored the instrument the moment he laid eyes on it. He’d played the harpsichord of course but there was something about the Piano that was new and exciting and just something he longed to try. He’d had one made down in Hell of course, just for practice. None of the music in hell sounded right, it was always just slightly off. Even after meeting a deaf composer who still turned out wonderful music, Lucifer couldn’t stand hearing the noise it made. Presumably his Father’s touch, taking away another thing Lucifer loved. He’d put the wretched thing in some musician’s hell loop and it haunted that soul just as much as it had haunted Lucifer. He had many instruments he had mastered, some he cared more for than others, but the piano would always hold a special place in his heart. There was something about it that was just perfect.

The Detective looked confused, eyebrows knitting together and she made a face. Lucifer’s confidence dropped even lower and he could almost feel his heart sink a little lower in his body. “You know, from when you asked me earlier.” Still nothing. “In the elevator”.

“Oh,” She mumbled, having seeming to have completely forgotten the memory already. It stung. “So you’re that old then?”

“Yes. You have to admit I look good for my age though.” No reaction, not even a slight smirk or lifting of an eyebrow. Lucifer had always used humor as the grease in conversations, something his serious and brooding siblings never caught on to. But here in a place where it would do nothing for him was again fairly new territory. He swallowed nervously; and decided to hide it by downing another drink. “So, what do you want to know first? Why you can’t divide by zero? How Hitler is being tortured?”

She took a large gulp of her drink, “Let’s start with Pierce who is actually Cain.” Of course she would ask that first. The more difficult questions.

“A long long time ago, two brothers got into it over who my Dad liked better, which was neither by the way. One thing led to another and Cain bashed Abel’s skull in with a rock. So as punishment he was to walk the Earth forever” She gestured for him to continue, though he wasn’t sure what else was relevant. “He thought I could help him die which is why he showed up here in the first place. His mark of punishment eventually disappeared and then he decided being mortal was too weak for him.”

He was leaving things out, like how Cain thought that it would be the Detective who made it vanish. How Cain lost his redemption by instantly scheming to get it back. He was sure she would put the pieces together eventually, but for now, now there were probably some things she find out slowly. He didn’t think he had enough alcohol to get through that conversation all at once.

“So somewhere between him wanting to die and him not wanting to die, he decided getting engaged to me was a good idea. Explain that one.” Lucifer felt like this was the wrong place for her to have that tone. The only time she used her Bossy-Police voice was when interrogating suspects. Maybe it fit that she was interrogating him but still. It hurt, even if it was just a defense mechanism.

“He thought that because you made me physically vulnerable that you would do the same to him.” Damn it this was difficult. Lucifer had always loved the truth and prided himself on honesty but was it worth it now, now that honesty made things hurt so bad. “Turns out his mark did go away but apparently the curse never did. Or the punishment never ended, he just thought it did.” Ah yes, That was a good one, he’d have to hand his father that one. Giving a desperate man exactly what he wanted, then convincing him he didn’t want the redemption it brought him in the first place, then sending your son with a sword after him leaving nothing but destruction and pain on the person they both cared about. How cruel.

And humans said Lucifer was the evil one.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes that stretched uncomfortably on. He wished she would say something, anything really but she seemed to be hoping he would do the same.

“Okay.” Lucifer broke the silence, standing up and going to grab another drink. “Let’s explain everything right now shall we? A number of years ago, my Father sent Amenadiel down to Earth to bless a couple trying to have a baby. That baby was you. I’m the actual devil, Maze is my demon and my brother is an angel. My mother following her escaping from hell borrowed Charlotte Richard’s body for a while. Malcom Graham really came back from hell after his coma. For some reason you make me vulnerable and Cain thought that would extend to him to. It didn’t.” She stared at him, wide eyed and he could see tears pooling up. Fuck. Hadn't putting it all out there made it better? Get over the shock in one go instead of this piece by piece torture? It had for Linda, why wasn't it working here?

“So it wasn’t real then?” And her confusion was hurtingly familiar to him. He’d felt it all his life it felt like, thinking things were one thing and then getting the rug jerked out from under you and then landing on your ass and making a fool out of yourself.

He grabbed another bottle off the wall, ignoring the label and what was in it entirely. It felt a lot like shame, which was funny because Lucifer’s entire existence defied the emotion. He didn’t feel shame for anything, but now, now that fact felt hollow.

“Some of it was.” He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye to admit it. “You’re not forced to care for me if that’s what you’re asking. Found that one out the hard way.” Lucifer couldn't bring himself to elaborate that one. He took a peak at her face but it just seemed indecipherable to him. She just looked sad. “Want some? It’s-“ and he spun the bottle around to read the label. “Tequila. Some kind of fancy Tequila.”

“No.”

Another swing from the bottle, not bothering to pour it. “You know you’re taking this really well.” It was meant to be a compliment but she didn’t react to it. “Really well. Linda didn’t speak to me for weeks when I told her.”

“Linda knows” She seemed genuinely surprised but Lucifer didn’t know why. She was a therapist, it was her job to know the worst things about her clients. He liked to think if he hadn’t run into Chloe he’d have tried his hat at being a therapist. Especially a sex therapist, now there was a fun job.

“Yes. She about forced it out of me.” She looked questioningly. “My face I mean. The Devil one. It actually helped get her on board with everything. It was actually helpful, especially when my mother showed up as Charlotte.”

She still looked upset. “Linda’s been telling me to tell you since the very beginning for what its worth.” He took another gulp down of tequila. He could start to feel the effects but instead of a usual happy buzz he got from drinking it felt like an emptiness. Like a void eating him from the inside. “Nothing felt like the right time first with my mum, then with pierce and the sinnerman stuff…” He was babbling. It was embarrassing. “You never wanted to believe me anyway.”

“Because you never offered me proof!” Now she was angry, this was what he had expected. It was somehow worse that she was angry with him. He’d thought the shocked silence was bad but found anger was worse. “You expected me to take you on faith-“

“Because I thought you didn’t want to know so I didn’t want to force you!” He understood why she was mad, Lucifer had been left out of enough with both angelic and demonic activities to know what being the odd man out felt like. “I didn’t want to take your choice about it away”

“That’s bullshit!” She was up and moving toward him and he was suddenly thankful he had put the bar in between them. “This is about you wanting to not deal with it. You said you were leaving being the devil behind but you didn’t think to mention that You. Were. Being. Literal!”

“Because you thought I was crazy!” He took another pull, looking for some kind of liquid courage that would make his words make sense to her. On some level he knew more alcohol was probably the last thing this situation needed right now but it seemed to soothe. Things had spiraled out of hand so fast, he wasn’t even sure how. One moment they were talking, laughing about pianos and now there was yelling. “You didn’t want to believe me!”

“So this is my fault?” Their breathing was ragged, both of them seemingly like they had run a great distance. She still looked like she was on the verge of tears but her words and tone suggested she was angry. Betrayed more like it. He wanted to pull the errant strand of hair that had fallen in her face but Lucifer felt that any attempt to touch her at the moment would end with him losing fingers.

“No.” He admitted quietly. “It’s not your fault.” It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Well maybe it was his Dad’s fault if he was really reaching. Even if he blamed himself for things and the way they had turned out, the entire situation wasn’t all Lucifer’s fault. “I should have told you sooner.” Another burning gulp. He felt it trying to soak up the emptiness in his stomach, he couldn’t think of the last time he ate.

“Yeah you should have.” His admission had calmed her, tears starting to fall. A small sob escaped her body, causing her to pull her arms around herself. “You should have told me.”

How did he explain that he didn’t want to tell her because of this moment? Because it would lead to her inevitable rejection of him? That this moment meant it was the beginning of the end of them, their partnership and nothing could go back to the way it was. Their easy banter, the way they fit together with cases. It was ending now surely and it hurt.

Lucifer felt the compulsion to comfort her, to pull her in and reassure her that he would never let her come to harm. That he would have returned to hell if it meant her safety and happiness. He let the bottle clunk down onto the counter, hating that she about jumped out of her skin when he did. She was watching his every movement through her tears, watching as he crossed over to the same side of the island she was on. She looked at the foot of space that separated the two of them and it was there he stopped, unsure if he should move any closer.

She fixed the gap for him, reaching out to touch him. He took in a deep shuddering breath as she laid her hand on his shirt, right over where his heart was. He wondered if she could feel through his shirt how fast it was beating. Lucifer slowly moved his hand to lay on top of hers, sighing with relief that this time she didn’t flinch. Her eyes were still teary, and she was staring at him again.

With great care to not startle her he pulled her in, noticing the way she fit right into the nooks of his body. Almost like she was made for him, his brain mocked but he pushed the thought away. Her head laid on his shoulder and he could still feel her shaking, sobs raking her body.

“I’m sorry” he confessed, feeling her nod against his shirt. “Chloe I’m so sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends!
> 
> I've been sick (not COVID but still not any fun) which is why this is late since I had to catch up with work and class first. I also re-wrote several sections because their conversation felt hard to get right, I hope I did them some justice.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading along with me. I appreciate any time you spend with my work.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a Priest walks into a Precinct

They had settled on an uneasy truce. They hadn’t seen each other since what Chloe was mentally referring to as _That_ Day. He had insisted on driving her home the next morning, neither of them believing they were capable of driving a car that evening. Him from an excessive amount of alcohol, and her from emotional shock.

Lucifer had been incredibly polite. Chloe had this feeling that he was more afraid of her than she was of him. Which was crazy, absolute fucking madness. He’d politely insisted she take the bed, making sure she knew there were clean sheets on it. She’d put up a small protest and he’d ended that standoff by refusing to get off the couch that he insisted on sleeping on and shutting his eyes. She was his guest and it, apparently in every form of human culture, it was a massive faux pas to let guests sleep on the sofa. Or sofa equivalent. Chloe had been 99% sure he was exaggerating but didn’t feel like she wanted to call him on it. She didn’t suggest uber, or a taxi, thinking it would hurt him. He seemed so fragile all of a sudden, oscillating between emotions even more than he did usually. It had sunk in then that maybe the day had been just as bad for him as it had been for her. Which was ludacris, absolute madness. And yet in the way he’d clung to her, as if he was afraid she was just going to disappear, be smited down, something.

Chloe’s instinct to take care of him had kicked in and well, she couldn’t leave him then. Not like that. Her brain had screamed he was dangerous, something truly frightening. The image of him standing over Marcus, no Cain, still made her shake. But it was more than that, it had to be. He’d been protecting her, hadn’t he? He’d insisted he was a monster since day one but something about it hadn’t felt quite right. It had been a job, an unwanted job but a job. That was why he got the sword back, because that job was over now? And seeing as Cain didn't actually die he hadn't technically killed him. 

It didn’t make any sense the more she thought about it. Maybe she would have to be content with never understanding. His world had always mystified her in a way. He’d always seemed to be concerned about things going on, things that had been more than they seemed but then all came to a perfectly logical conclusion that he’d anxiously watched her accept. He hadn’t wanted her to know, hadn’t wanted her to know about any of it.

And now she did. And the more pieces he had given her the more her brain was able to fit things together. Charlotte suddenly turning into not Charlotte and into someone else. The fighting with Amenadiel, over things like creation, acting as though they weren’t of it. The behaviors that had seemed normal, human to her, and his complete baffledness at things that were the most ordinary. He’d been completely confused on how to behave around Trixie, which if he’d been in hell for millennia and when on Earth not around the best company of humanity, her daughter had probably thrown him for a loop.

She hadn’t remembered when she had fallen asleep, however the next morning she had woken up to the smell of pancakes and maple syrup, and Lucifer insisting she had given him a hang-over. He’d claimed that the smell of eggs made him nauseous so he’d thrown out and then threw up on the omelet he had tried making. Honestly, the devil got hang-overs, just like humans did. Except only around her, because she was special. Life just got weirder and weirder the more she learned. There hadn’t been much talking after that, he’d decided on taking his cues from her which she was and wasn’t grateful for. It was hard to distract herself from the fact he was the same partner she’d had when he was a mute but it also made being around him for those moments easier somehow.

The ride back to her place had been just as quiet, he’d driven obeying all road laws and with the classical music station on the radio to distract from the lack of conversation. She’d made it all the way inside before remembering he had no way to get home, only to find him gone when she went to check back outside. No human way anyway. The part of Chloe’s brain that didn’t feel mentally exhausted wondered how flying worked. Could he teleport? The laws of time and space didn’t seem to apply to his mother, maybe they didn’t apply to him either. There had to be a rulebook, a set of quasi-scientific theories that governed how they got around in the universe.

Chloe had pushed that out of her mind. She could only deal with one Celestial revelation at a time and his mother, was not a mental priority at the moment. Maybe that was why Lucifer was so good with her own mother, because he’d had so much practice dealing with exhausting maternal figures. The woman scared her, and despite having already met her, now was a whole new ballgame. It helped a bit Lucifer had been just as unnerved by her appearance as well. She had no idea what was going through his head about the visit, and Chloe hadn’t even understand a fourth of what had been spoken. 

She’d spent the next week of her two week leave while the investigation occurred going over everything she knew about Lucifer and what the depths of the internet had to offer her on demons. His mother wasn’t mentioned anywhere near the Christian or Judaic texts she’d found or the blogs written by people who confessed to know of the Divine on the 30th page of Google. Unfortunately all the internet had to offer her felt lacking in information so she turned to what she could find around Los Angeles. Chloe had learned quite a lot about Religion, all about the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Reformation. She’d learned about the structure of the Hebrew language, as well as some basic Greek and Latin. She’d dabbled in texts written on Sumerian religions, looked at photos of Steeles and any archaeological evidence she could find.

None of it answered any questions she had but instead gave her a bunch more.

They’d formed an uneasy texting relationship at that point. She’d sent a silly message, not expecting a serious response and received a long explanation in turn twenty minutes later.

_Chloe: So you and Goats?_

_Lucifer: Bloody ridiculous. I have spent literal decades trying to find out where it came from and I cannot. My earliest guess is that since Goats were used in sacrifice to wash away sin, which in and of itself was an odd notion but better than the one in which they sacrificed actual children and people, they got associated with being sinful themselves. Then there is the whole Baphomet business, which probably comes from other Gods at the time of the Bible being written resembling goats. The bible and similar Holy books, as I’m sure you’ve discovered, are not very accurate in certain instances. Then when it just seemed to die down multiple other books on the subject got written and now all of humanity thinks I have horns. I honestly couldn’t answer your question except to assure you my feet are perfectly normal and I have no hooves._

She’d snorted and rolled her eyes. For a moment it felt like things were normal. She could hear his voice and the very real outrage and could mime by memory the way he’d gesture to articulate his point. Then the reality of the fact he was explaining to her about the embodiment of evil resembling a petting zoo creature came back and it messed everything up again.

At that point Chloe had given up on her reading, returning all the religious texts she’d borrowed from the various institutions around Los Angeles. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised but the fact Los Angeles had multiple monasteries had been amusing. City of Angels indeed.

She’d mostly sent him questions that came to mind, odd little things. He seemed content to answer all of them, offering paragraphs of explanation without using emojis. If Chloe had been religious or a history buff she’d have been giddy, but having been a former atheist and having missed a lot of the traditional history classes due to acting, she didn’t ask much. Lucifer was also apparently glued to the device as she never waited more than a few minutes for a reply after her initial message but never messaged her unprompted.

Linda had reached out too, saying whenever Chloe wanted to have a drink or a chat to let her know. Chloe had debated it, having actually written out the message multiple times but ended up deleting it each time. Trixie had been with Dan, he’d begged to take her actually, Charlotte’s death having hit him hard. He had to be normal for Trixie he explained, and that meant he couldn’t spiral into grief over the loss. Chloe wanted to comfort him, tell him that Charlotte had gone to heaven and that she was okay and Dan would see her again. She’d deleted those messages before sending them too, remembering how much she had hated it when people said it to her after her Dad died. Maze was staying away, though whether that had do with Cain or to let Chloe process what she was going through without having a demon around Chloe wasn’t sure. She’d almost messaged her too, and erased them. How did one even start a conversation like that anyway, ‘Hi, can you tell me about being a demon?’. She had no idea if Cain had reached out to her, and though Lucifer hadn’t seemed worried about Maze, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t do something impulsive if Chloe accidentally provoked her. Maybe stories about demons being rage filled had a grain in truth of them in Mazikeen.

Her latest message to Lucifer had been one before her first day back. She’d have a meeting with Jake from internal affairs in the morning but Chloe wasn’t worried. Jake had assured her in his email that he’d spoken with multiple agents from multiple Federal agencies and how they had all assured him that she hadn’t known anything and that they had surveillance photos to prove it. He’d also said Lucifer had explained Cain’s rationale to him and that the interview was just a formality. She didn’t even want to touch whatever idea Lucifer had concocted to explain that one away. After that she would be meeting with the interim captain, someone from another precinct that she didn’t know. The email she had received had been brief, but included an invitation to talk if she needed it. It also had noted that Lucifer was welcome to continue being her partner and she wondered if he’d made any calls on her behalf.

_Chloe: I have an internal affairs meeting at nine but will be going back to work tomorrow. Do you want to come too?_

_Lucifer: I wouldn’t miss it._

She’d wondered if it was wise, having her seeing him in person for the first time at the precinct. It was her turf, her domain and while she knew Lucifer could tear through the walls of it just as easily as if they were paper it was a comfort somehow. It was her space, so she should be able to see him in it without freaking out or hyperventilating. Besides, he would have to behave about the devil stuff, Ella and Dan would be there, as well as a bunch of other humans. Maybe she’d get lucky and have no murders and just have paperwork. Lucifer abhorred paperwork, saying it reminded him of hell and that he’d left hell for a reason.

She’d avoided asking him about hell so far, his family and anything that had to do with Cain. She’d mostly asked general non-scary questions like why humanity had appendixes (they’d been a leftover organ from something that hadn’t been implemented after all) whether evolution was actually a thing (it was and was done on purpose) and how many Presidents were in hell (quite a few). She asked how many languages he knew (all of them) when he’d taken to wearing suits (as soon as he saw one, he’d always been a fashion snob it seemed) and just what else he could do (languages, the desire thing, travel through planes of existence and had helped mold the world).

Chloe had made it to her meeting with internal affairs five minutes early. She’d dealt with them after Palmetto, and they had been happy to ignore her then but were anxious to see her now. She wondered if maybe the heat from multiple Federal agencies about letting the head of a crime syndicate run a police precinct had anything to do with that.

“Hello Detective Decker!” Was her bright and cherry introduction to Jake. He was clearly a morning person and had to be just out of the academy recently, he looked like he couldn’t be more than twenty years old.

They’d exchanged small pleasantries before he got right into business. “I’ve fielded multiple calls from the Feds, which would have been nice if they had let us know about their investigation before we let Marcus Pierce take a job with us. But after speaking with them and your partner it becomes very clear.”

Oh no. He’d already made up his mind about this, or his superior had and he was sent to do the heavy lifting. “Oh?” was all she managed to get out before wondered if she should be calling her union rep.

“Mhmm.” He smiled confidently and she tried to match his energy. “He clearly targeted you because of your reputation for going after dirty cops. Get close to you, and his reputation among your fellow officers would be almost unquestionable. After all you went through with Palmetto and your ex-husband, that whole fiasco, it was the perfect cover. He could have shot Charlotte Richards in the precinct and almost no one would have questioned him. Your partner, Lucifer, he explained that you had felt something was off, called off the engagement and when you started looking into him, you find poor Ms. Richards was doing the same thing. Then in his attempts to stop her from going after him, you discovered what he actually was. After that you went to people you could trust because you didn’t know how far his reach was and wanted to make sure the evidence against him was air tight.” Jake had smiled at her then, looking sympathetic. Chloe had just nodded along, not sure what to do otherwise. Like so many other things that happened around Lucifer, things ended up tied up with a neat bow, a perfectly reasonable explanation and she couldn’t find it in herself to correct him on anything.

“Wait, Lucifer said all that?” Her brain had just noticed his name thrown in there and Jake had nodded, pulling out what she recognized as interview transcript print-outs, pages and pages of them. Lucifer had a way with words and a lot of times he never shut up but there was a lot there. What else had he gone on about?

“Yeah along with Daniel Espinoza and Ella Lopez, they all collaborated his story but it seemed he had the most details about things out of all of them” Jake had paused then, stopping rearranging his files. “I guess he didn’t want you to know about that if he didn’t tell you. He seemed so upset when he came in, he wanted to make sure we knew that none of this reflected poorly on you.” The young detective studied her for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “He went on about how terrible this has been for you. As far as partners go he’s one of the most devoted I’ve met.” Chloe didn’t bother asking him how many he had met in his short time, her brain had been too wrapped up in the idea that Lucifer had sat down with internal affairs, given them probably exactly whatever they needed to close things, and had done it all without her knowing he was doing it. He’d never brought it up once, and normally he was all about oversharing.

“yeah, yeah he is.” And just like that interview over. She’d barely said anything, just confirmed things, things that her brain pointed out were the truth since Lucifer didn’t ever outright lie, and she was being hurried out, Jake offering her coffee or a word in with someone at Central if she was ever looking to change her career focus. She’d gotten a lot of those comments lately.

Chloe had told Lucifer her interview would take a while and to not expect her at the precinct until at least lunch time. Ella had insisted they all go for lunch together to celebrate Chloe and Lucifer’s return. Dan had told her not worry about the new Captain, some guy named Holt. He was apparently strictly about business and fixing the precinct’s reputation. Apparently someone had leaked to the press a few details about the Sinnerman and he was busy putting out fires and doing damage control.

Which she guessed was exactly what he was doing when she arrived, it looked like her meeting would have had to wait until he returned from an inspection. A uni had told her the new Captain was doing inventory of all equipment and running over things with a fine toothed comb and wouldn’t be back until later. Ella and Dan were out at a crime scene, a stabbing of some kind. She resigned herself to catching up on emails or paperwork and soon found herself in a steady rhythm until a gentle tap on the desk.

Chloe about jumped out of her skin which in turned frightened the man there to see her. A Priest, amusingly enough. She was almost glad Lucifer wasn’t here yet, his comments about the church and some of its doctrine would have made her unable to focus.

“Hi, can I help you?” She had no idea how he had gotten past the front desk. Then the logic side of her mind kicked in. Was this something from Lucifer’s mother or father, a not so subtle reminder of who it was in fact she was dealing with. Had his mother decided Chloe’s distance had hurt him and she was sending a message? Honestly she was becoming just as paranoid as Lucifer, deducing the man must have a celestial purpose and he hadn’t even opened his mouth yet.

“Are you Detective Chloe Decker?” and at her nod he continued. “You left a few notes in a book you returned, I thought you may have wanted them.” He passed her a manilla envelope and Chloe felt herself blush. She’d thought she’d gotten them all before returning it. “Research into your partner?” His tone was light and yet something felt off to Chloe. She’d never be able to explain it but her gut was telling her to pay attention in all capitals.

“Not exactly.” If this man was in fact a divine messenger of some sort, he’d know what she was doing. Or he simply could have looked her up trying to do a good deed in returning some handwritten notes, found out who she was and her partner’s name. “It’s for something else.” His gaze made it feel like he was studying her. “A potential connection to a case. The sinnerman one, I felt like I needed to understand it.” Not quite a lie, not quite the truth either. “I’m sorry what did you say your name was Father?”

He laughed, and Chloe felt the tension lift. “I’m so sorry dear, I forgot to introduce myself in all my hurry to get this back to you. I’m Father Kinley. I’m on loan to one of the Catholic Bishops you borrowed some books from.” Oh that made sense. See, a perfectly normal rational explanation. Not everything was divine in origin it seemed.

“Oh thank you for those. I had no idea until I started researching LA had so much on that.”

The Father shrugged. “Los Angeles seems to inspire it. After all, just take a look at your partner.” The feeling was back, that weird little nidge that told her something wasn’t quite right. “Provided he is an inspiration of it of course.”

“Well you know, it’s that or he’s the actual devil.” Chloe answered, tone light. It was a really good thing Lucifer wasn’t here for this conversation. He’d probably had insisted on an intellectual pissing match over church ideaology, just to be annoying and to show off. Now that she knew everything.

“Well is he?” The Priest’s tone had quieted, and he was looking around furtively as though Lucifer was going to suddenly appear. Chloe supposed the whole idea of ‘Speak of the Devil and he shall appear’ maybe had to have come from somewhere. She made a mental note to ask him.

“No.” And Chloe found herself realizing that was true. He’d never been the devil, not to her anyway. “He’s just Lucifer.”

Undaunted the Priest sat in the chair next to her desk. The one Lucifer usually took and hid so no one else but him could use it. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t the same thing.” Chloe studied him and found him to be dead serious in his belief. Oh it was really a good thing Lucifer wasn’t here.

Chloe shrugged, nonchalantly as possible. “I don’t know what to tell you. He’s currently a police consultant and night club owner.”

“But he appeared here a few years ago. There’s no record of him before that.” Chloe felt a lump in her throat. He’d done his homework clearly. “Detective Decker, I must insist you tell me.” He pulled out another file, and glancing over it she could see it was written in Italian. “I’m from the Vatican, they asked me out here to investigate him. Sent me over a few weeks ago in fact.” He pushed it forward towards her and she recognized the look. She’d seen it in suspects who desperately wanted her to believe whatever it was they were telling her.

On one hand, Chloe wanted to tell him. But then one the other and the side with her logic she knew she couldn’t. If she had learned anything it was that humanity clearly wasn’t sure what to do with the divine and seemed to pick the worst way to interpret things. Maybe it was a test of some kind her brain reasoned. Lucifer’s mother had done it to her in the court room with her father’s murderer, maybe she had sent this Father Kinley on his way to test her again, see if she could handle what the universe and all it was had thrown at her. It actually made a whole lot of sense, she clearly didn’t particularly care for Chloe all that much and if Chloe sold Lucifer out to the Vatican of all people his mother would only use it as proof Lucifer needed that Chloe was rejecting him.

“Decker. The Captain just came back, wants to see you in his office. He has a murder case for you.” A young uni, Ramirez or something, thankfully interrupted the conversation and saved her from having to come up with an excuse as to why she couldn’t talk.

“Look Father, I appreciate you tracking me down to return these but I promise you, Lucifer had never hurt an innocent.” He seemed unconvinced and like he was about to say something but closed his mouth before it could come out. “Now I’m sorry but I really do need to be getting going. Bad guys to catch and all that.” The Father just nodded before standing up to leave.

“If you would like to talk.” He scribbled down something on the envelope. “Please don’t hesitate to reach out. I know the Prince of Lies can say things but I promise you-“

“Really Father.” Chloe hated interrupting people but this really was getting to be too much. The last thing the investigation into Cain’s not being dead needed was the Vatican poking around. Not that they’d probably accept it anyway. “He would never hurt someone innocent, Lucifer is all about bringing people to justice. So while I understand you’re on an investigation of your own Lucifer is not a danger.”

“But that is precisely what you don’t understand!” He hissed at her, standing up now and Chloe just now registered how tall he was. “He is, you have to let me show you.” Chloe stood up on her own. She didn’t know what all Lucifer meant or anything really but she was not about to start taking cues from a man who was trying to intimidate her onto his side.

She held her hand up, stopping him from going any farther. “Father please. I need to catch a murderer.” She turned and looked to Ramirez who just seemed bewildered by the entire exchange. “Can you please see him out?” The Patrolman nodded and Father Kinley started to protest but Chloe firmly ignored him, gathering up her things to meet her new Captain. He was just like that one Preacher that Malcom had killed, a little extreme in his beliefs but ultimately trying to do good in the way he knew how. He was just misguided, that’s all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I made a few tweaks to the previous chapter. I think it will be one of those things I'll never be satisfied with in how it turned out. I think I'm going to stay switching between Lucifer and Chloe too.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a new case unsettles the Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, just wanted to drop this in here real quick! I have this story rated M and marked with depictions of violence for a reason so if it's something you're not comfortable with you may want to just stop when they enter the house.

He’d changed suits five, no, six times. Maybe he was overthinking things, no he definitely was over thinking things. But Lucifer had found he couldn’t help it, first he’d pulled out every suit he’d ever gotten a compliment on from the humans of the LAPD and then picked from his favorite among them. Then he thought he was going about it wrong and put on the first one he’d been wearing when he first met the detective. Then Lucifer had decided to go with the one she had complimented first, reasoning it was the first time she had decided to notice him as attractive. Then he started going through suits he’d worn on other occasions, like their first case, their first stakeout, last case, the one he’d worn when they had dinner. There were large piles of suit pieces and assorted clothing items all over the room and he inwardly groaned at the thought of dry cleaning them all again. Nothing had seemed right and so he finally settled on one that he’d gotten a compliment from both Ella, who was generous in her compliments, and the detective, who was not so generous with compliments. Something about a man who wasn’t afraid of light purple, whatever that had meant. Her tone had been sincere and that was what mattered.

Lucifer had been up since dawn, actually just before dawn, watching the final stars fade away under the light of the coming sun. He watched the sunrise in the east, the sight never failing to fill him with a rush of pride every time he saw it. No one ever gave him credit for that, among humanity it had always been a footnote, a small point in his favor among the religious. His family had only used the term in a sarcastic compliment or to butter him up for something. The detective had asked him about it, asking how many of his many names actually applied to him. She’d made no comments regarding the answers he’d given her, she never had unless it had been a follow up question.

No response was better than a negative response. That was something he supposed he should be thankful for but it instead made him anxious. He’d agonized over it with Linda for hours, the only thing she had concluded was that the detective was being very careful in her responses and that Linda could not tell him why, only that different humans responded to things different ways. She’d compared it to showing affection, some people preferred spending time together, some people preferred compliments, some preferred touching (Linda had been very concerned with him realizing this meant more than just sex), an act of service and some people preferred physical gifts. How Linda had reacted was going to be different to how the detective would react because she approached things differently. It would have been nice to know earlier but he supposed he couldn’t fault her for being human. He’d brushed off Linda’s notion she hadn’t asked anything important in order to do it in person. The detective had been terrified by him, he’d seen it in the way she watched him every time he’d moved. Linda had said it was a good sign that she had followed him up to his penthouse to talk to him, but Lucifer felt any progress that was there had been ruined by his mother.

The Goddess had not appeared since that evening. The initial tentative positive feelings about his father had faded quickly, even Linda had been forced to admit an apology didn’t mean much if it came in the form of an object without words attached. She’d explained part of why he had felt so unsatisfied by it was because an apology had three components: the actual apology, the acknowledgement of what a person was sorry for and how that person would act going forward. Clearly Mazikeen had been given the same lecture because she’d shown up shortly after to Lux, looking less like her usual self and more like she had when he had first met her.

That had been the only good thing to come out of his fall. Maze had accepted him at what Lucifer had thought of as his very lowest, and she had done it without questions or anything to gain. She’d been a reject, cast out by the main Liliam for not being what Lilith had deemed worthy. She saw a lot of herself in him and him in her. They both sought vengeance and deep down, acceptance, from a person who had brought them into the world. Maybe it was poetic that she had received vengeance and him a tepid acceptance, if his mother had a thought to spare about Mazikeen she would have found it funny. But as she was his mother, she probably had devoted no thought beyond irritation to the only person Lucifer trusted to truly guard his mother. She’d have thought of her as someone he had found pretty instead of being the only fellow creature in hell he had found he could trust. More proof his Mother had never fully understood him, not in the ways that mattered.

Most demons had delighted in his situation, hating who he had been under his Father and happy to see him struggle. Every mistake he made in his pursuit of becoming Hell’s ruler had been rubbed in his face and it was only his divinity that had kept him from being wiped out. Even after he’d destroyed anyone who questioned his rule of hell and the surviving demons’ snickers had turned into praises, their voices had felt hollow. He may have won over the loyalty of demons who were created after his consolidation of power but the old guard would destroy him without any hesitation if they sensed a weakness. Not Mazikeen. She’d been the first to befriend him, to recognize his worth. Her betrayal had hurt more than he would admit even to Linda.

He’d be forgiving her, eventually. He had never known until Earth for Mazikeen to fail him, to break his trust. He had seen Mazikeen through her very worst moments, moments when her mother failed her, moments when it seemed they were about to be destroyed and lose everything they had worked centuries for, the moment Lilith had confessed she wished Mazikeen had never been born. Maze’d never wavered in her resolve; her voice had never cracked and she had never looked fragile. She looked like a stone then, ready to emerge from the fires unscathed, not some bottle someone had dropped.

Lucifer didn’t know what had been worse, the fact that she was actually following Linda’s apology recipe or the fact she was giving it in the first place. It had finally forced him to accept Earth had changed her.

She’d slunk off afterwards after he told her he needed time. Maybe it was proof Earth had changed him too in that he hadn’t outright said no, putting his feelings of friendship over his pride. He did have the decency to warn her Cain was still out and about and the order, no strongly worded suggestion, from upstairs his mother had come to deliver. Mum taking on the lowest job of an angel, a messenger, now that would have made Maze laugh if things weren’t so monumentally fucked between the two of them.

How on Earth did humans patch things like this up in the time they had in the world? He’d ignored her for a decade in Earth time for much less.

He wondered if the Detective would be willing to offer any advice, seeing as she was her roommate after all. Would that even be something she was ready for today? She’d been taking things well, so much better than he could have expected really. When would she be ready to talk about demons? Would it be soon? Because as much as he hated to admit it, Maze was an excellent tracker and knew more about what Cain would do than he did.

He’d had no luck on that front. While Cain had to know Lucifer would search the ends of the Earth to find him and that Lucifer had the rage to fuel such a search, it would take a while. Earth was a rather large place, even if it was dwarfed by the rest of the universe in comparison. Cain was on borrowed time, that much was certain. Lucifer also wasn’t sure what saying no and telling the Almighty to strike Cain down himself if he wanted him struck down so badly would do. Until he had a better handle on what exactly was going on upstairs he wasn’t going to make any moves.

Well no big moves. Lucifer had been going through Cain’s former organization. It had been a good exercise in some much-needed re-tuning of his darker form’s control, he had slipped into it far too easily and without awareness. The last thing he wanted was for it to come out at the wrong moment and scare the Detective and their suspect who would be innocent knowing his luck. Privately it nagged at him how easily it was to slip back into his old skin, but nagging thoughts did not bring punishment to the guilty.

He’d destroy Cain for what he had done to the Detective. For who Cain had helped turn Mazikeen into. For not liking Beatrice and making the small girl ponder if her mother would still have time for her after their marriage. Lucifer would bear the pain of the scars again if it meant the destruction of Earth’s first murdered without hesitation. A fair trade in his book.

But those were future Lucifer problems. Present Lucifer problems included finding a parking space and somehow killing a few minutes. She’d instructed him to show up on time for a welcome back lunch Ms. Lopez insisted on, and Ms. Lopez was incredibly punctual with her lunch break, beginning at 12 PM sharp. He’d tried messing with the precinct clock in her lab, setting it a few minutes forwards, backwards, even upside down. Still 12 PM. It was currently 11:52.

He mentally went through his checklist:

-no jokes about anything religious

-no references to anything they had discussed over a text message

-no references to anything he had done on Earth prior to his arrival in Los Angeles

-no mentioning anything celestial since his arrival in Los Angeles, his family and Maze included

-no mentioning anything he could do that humans couldn’t

It was a small list but carried a wide variety of topics. The vast majority of Lucifer’s go to talking points were things that he’d learned from humans who were already dead or things he’d learned from using his powers. Just be his normal, non-threatening self. He wasn’t a monster or the thing that caused humanity to fear the darkness. He was a regular guy who couldn’t make buildings fall, couldn’t fly, wasn’t the jail-keeper for humanity’s worst. He was as boring as Daniel was. Not a comforting thought.

He’d been so engrossed in his thoughts he failed to notice his collision course with another human until Lucifer quite literally almost walked into him in the doorway, swerving last moment to avoid direct contact with a Priest of all people. Just his luck. Lucifer mumbled his customary “pardon me” hating that of all humans he had to be polite to, it was one of the humans who called for his eternal damnation. It would do no good to start a fight today, he knew that, even if the creature inside him was desperately looking for a target to take his Cain frustrations out on and a man of the cloth would do. Unfortunately, his manners didn’t matter to the Father. The Father took one look at Lucifer’s face and shot off like a bat out of hell. Metaphorically of course, there were no bats in hell.

He spent the next few minutes preening and obsessing in the men’s room, cursing the flickering fluorescent lights all the while, convinced the Priest had been able to see his inner turmoil and a less friendly visage had greeted him. Lucifer would have sworn on and to many things that it hadn’t, but the look on the man’s face indicated otherwise. Lucifer could not lose control, not today. Not when his proving his usefulness to the Detective was being tested. He’d have to talk to Linda again, maybe go over meditation exercises or something. Think about happy thoughts he instructed his brain. Absolute peace and control it.

Lucifer was probably better than most of beings of celestial origins about his less human appearance. He’d always been yelled at for using his powers recklessly but who could last days around humanity and not slip up once? Not the Archangel Michael, Gabriel, or most of his other siblings. That’s who. He had thought he had been doing so well since that first slip up in a warehouse down on the docks the day after he’d brought the Detective home. He’d pushed himself over and over again in the penthouse bathroom since, focusing on re-controling his face. It was just like riding a bicycle, once you knew how you never forgot, it just required some practice again to get back up to previous levels. Hours of practice.

His phone beeped at him, 11:57. Right. He pulled himself to look in the mirror one last time before going out, looking for anything that was out of place or unfamiliar. No red stared back at him, there weren’t any wrinkles or dust in his clothing, he’d made sure his entire person looked presentable. He looked just like he always did. All that was missing was his confidence.

Lucifer desperately wished he’d rethought his bringing of a flask, decided not to bring it as it often inspired ire. He was the Lord of hell and did not need a drink to steel his nervous before seeing a human woman. He just wanted one. With a resolve in his movement he didn’t feel internally, Lucifer bound into the bullpen, the weight around his chest feeling lighter at the busy hum around him. He’d actually missed this place, the realization felt like a shock. He’d complained about every aspect of the precinct, the coffee the coffee machine made was not good, the colors were drab, the vending machine was often broken, there was no sense of privacy anywhere, the water fountain had low water pressure, essentially the precinct was a monument to failed civic funding. He’d been told to write his congressperson and city hall to address his complaints, but Lucifer couldn’t see why that obviously futile exercise would change anything. Lucifer would have bought them a building himself if that hadn’t appeared like bribing the police. The LAPD had a bad enough reputation as it was, no need to add another count of bribery to it just so he could paint the walls a color other than beige or light blue.

Lucifer felt like his insides were about to crawl out of his body when he noticed her, swallowing down nerves several times. She was bent over a file on her desk, inspecting the envelope it had arrived in carefully, having not noticed him yet. Her hair was pulled back as usual, though today she had decided on a bun over a ponytail. Lucifer puzzled internally what that meant, buns were more work, especially neat ones like her own. Had she decided to dress up too? He felt a rush at noticing she was wearing the necklace he had given her, a clear sign as any that things were going to be okay. He knew he’d botched the delivery of it, but he had given it to her not as a joke but as a piece of his soul. To always be with her, so she could never forget him or throw him away completely. What had come out at the time was definitely not that, but he still felt a pang of pride every time she wore it. She was choosing to be associated with him, to show those around her that she carried a piece of him with her. Her dark jacket was slung over the back of her chair, folded in such a way that she’d have no wrinkling in the material, just like she always did. Her shirt was a soft blue he’d remembered telling her once she looked lovely in.

He was silently relieved to not be the only one who had dressed up. Even if he would never admit he had done it to impress her. What was that saying, the more things changed the more they stayed the same? Maybe he was finally understanding the meaning now.

She appeared to be deep in thought, concentrating on whatever was in front of her, demanding it give her the answers she wanted. He felt his body perk up, maybe they had a good case today where the bad guy was definitely bad and the deceased was definitely good? The LAPD stood for justice for all of course, but he thought maybe having something so black in white after knowing who he truly was would help. After all, it was hard to believe likable anti-heroes might end up in hell, but a bad guy who, say murdered children and kitties alike while selling drugs to middle schoolers, would be a good reminder that his former place in the universe was nice to have sometimes. That justice was doled out on a cosmic scale.

He had almost managed to make his entire way over to her before being grabbed by a separate tiny human. “Lucifer!” Ms. Lopez cried, calling the Detective’s attention over to them. “I’m so glad you’re here, we almost missed you, we have a new crime scene so celebration lunch is now celebration dinner!” He managed to extract his arms to return her hug, making small protests about wrinkling his suit. Ella didn’t care and she unfortunately knew Lucifer didn’t care about the suit either, giving him one last squeeze before pulling her arms back to look him over. “Ohhh you’re wearing the purple one. Knew you would!” The petite brunette turned to Chloe and shot her a very not subtle look, eyebrows raised in a silent ‘Told-You-So’. Lucifer felt the heat rise in his face, had they discussed him? Had it been the wrong suit? He silently willed himself to breathe slowly, repeating a mental mantra of ‘no red’ over and over in his mind. No emotions could mess up today, not even ones that had nothing to do with the Devil half of himself.

The Detective had pulled her jacket over herself, keys already in hand. She stopped short of hugging him but still stood nearby, lips pursed. “It’s not a pretty crime scene. But apparently we get it instead of Major Crimes due to its extremely religious nature.” Her tone was light but in reality, Lucifer sensed something else in her tone. Anger, frustration maybe? He thought he had picked up on her emotions pretty well by now, which meant she was shutting him out on purpose. She’d done that a lot even before a showdown with Cain. Maybe this time it was out of resentment at him having been the reason they had been assigned the case? The Detective did not shy away from work, it made no sense for her to be angry about their workload. It must have to do with the nature of the crime, the religious part.

Well that was fair. He never had a good time when Dad was involved either.

“Is that why the Father was running out of here? The church turned back to some of its darker days? Started a new kind of outreach program? Reliving the glory days?” His tone was light and teasing but the Detective’s face made him uneasy and he tucked a few other quips he’d thought of away for another day. Maybe he was right. Oh he did love it when the church received its comeuppance, self-righteous bastards. Looking down on him as though they were somehow better. ‘No matter how evil you are you’ll never be as evil as Lucifer himself’ and all that bullshit. As though they had some right to judge him. There were exceptions, always there were exceptions, but they were few and far between. His heart squeezed a bit as he thought about Father Frank, remembering the goodness and faith in the man.

“No,” the detective mumbled, if not for his supernatural hearing he wouldn’t have caught it. She then turned to look at him straight on and he squirmed under her look. The Detective had not even entertained a joke. It must be serious. He felt like his soul was fully bare to her gaze, like she could see every flaw he had, knew his every thoughts and was staring into him. She was fully seeing him knowing all he was for the first time and Lucifer hated he couldn’t tell what she saw when she looked at him. People’s faces were usually easy to read but her’s, her’s was neutral. “He came to see me about something else.” Her voice went up a bit at the end, a sign she was upset.

“Oh.” His stomach churned, that could mean all kinds of things. The fact the man was hurrying out meant maybe she had asked to meet the Priest before his arrival.

His face must have shone the hurt he felt. “He came to me uninvited. Wanted to talk about something.” She clarified and Lucifer felt slightly better. Of course she would have had questions but she knew he never lied to anyone. He’d thought that she would have turned to him, or Linda if she had any questions, not a total stranger. Seeing he was unconvinced she elaborated. “He had heard your name and came to warn me about you.” Well that was even worse. He could feel his face fall and felt a metaphorical punch to the gut. “I assured him you were nothing to worry about.” She continued, choosing to act like there was nothing to worry about here.

“Freaky.” Ella added, sensing maybe some tension and helpfully reminding them she was there. Lucifer was grateful for her interruption, it meaning he didn’t have to talk. “Like I know people get super wound-up about that stuff. I went to a church with some family when I was visiting in Texas and let me tell you, Baptist preachers are something else. Dude preached for hours and made the chandelier shake. The Chandelier, how crazy is that?”

The Detective nodded, seeming entirely unfazed. “He felt it was his duty to warn me.” She smiled then went dead serious, eyes growing wide and her voice deepening to convey the importance of her question “You’re not here to take my soul are you, King of Darkness?”

“Absolutely not!” came his offended reply, the fact she was joking with him taking a moment to register. Ella’s laughter and the Detective’s gentle smile pointed out he had taken the bait and would now be the subject of teasing. He huffed, crossing his arms, upset he’d even considered she may think that of him. Of course, she would have no use for a Priest who thought such silly things. “Got no use for souls anyway.” The statement made Ella laugh harder and the Detective stopped, as though the thought of him collecting souls had just crossed her mind. They’d have to talk about that.

Ella provided the easy buffer for them all the way out to the parking lot. If she noticed them being awkward in their careful movements around each other, the Detective keeping him in sight at all times and him trying to make sure he didn’t make a sudden movement, she chose to keep her comments to herself. She kept them updated with station gossip, the Sergeant was getting a divorce, a new Patrolmen had gotten to arrest a celebrity of some kind, some YouTuber, honestly standards for fame got lower and lower as humanity lived on. The new Captain was nice, quiet and authoritative, and she’d been arguing with a fellow tech over priority ordering for ballistics from a drive by the previous week and the ballistics for a home invasion.

Ella had left them then, saying she would be riding with forensics. She bid them a cheerful good bye, telling them she would see them there. There had been another pointed look in the Detective’s direction and Lucifer choose to pretend he didn’t see it.

He’d walked slightly ahead of her to the car, his long strides causing him to move quickly. The thought of being in an enclosed space with her both thrilled and terrified him. There was nowhere to go if things went bad, and no place for him to run off to. She’d see through his humor now and there would be no distracting her by bringing up random human events or how humanity got the past wrong.

Honesty truly was more terrifying than anything else.

The lock clicked open for him as it usually did and he slid in the passenger’s seat, reveling in the feel of the mediocre quality upholstery. Lucifer had never thought he’d be in the car again and it lead to him being thankful for some weird things. Like whatever fabric the seats of early 2000s vehicles were made of. He was buckled in and ready to go as she opened her side of the door, slinging paperwork and other things she carried with her into the backseat. The engine turned over and he managed to wait until they were out of the parking lot for all of two seconds before breaking the silence.

“So a Priest.” It wasn’t even really a question, he just wanted to know, had to know. He knew she would have doubts, try to turn to something familiar. Daniel had been Catholic and their wedding had been performed in a church. Catholics required memberships in order to get a church for a wedding and so she must have gone through it, even if she was atheist at the time. It made sense.

“He tracked me down. Said he was from the Vatican.” Her tone was even but he could sense her irritation. She turned to look at him then “He lied about why he wanted to see me. He said I left a paper I took notes on in a book I checked out from their archives but the envelope he gave me was empty.” Her lovely face turned into a frown. He felt the annoyance in her voice, she hated liars just as much he did. “I thought maybe your mother sent him.”

“Believe me Detective, my mother is into big gestures. If you’d heard from her you would know. A rainstorm for forty days and forty nights. Plagues of locusts and rivers of blood, that kind of thing.” Her face had paled at that and Lucifer felt like he had messed up again. “It was bound to happen sooner or later, the Vatican gets kind of pissy when other people claim to be religious figures and know what my father wants in the world. It’s why there’s so many of them in Dante’s version of Hell.” He tried to joke and her smile was on her face for a brief few moments.

“She come back by lately?” Her tone was light but he could hear the strain she was trying to hide under the cherry tone. Things with Mum could never be easy, they never ever were after all. But now when other people got involved, when other people could get hurt? It inspired a fierce protectiveness he was not accustomed to.

“No.” He admitted. He was used to Father being silent, Mother had been the opposite. If anything she had meddled in his situations and affairs too much. “I don’t like it.” He confessed. He saw her relax, which he found odd. His admittance at not knowing what his mother was doing should worry her.

“Well, maybe she’s just trying to let you get your own footing?” She suggested, trying to cheer him up. “I mean the fact you haven’t heard anything means there isn’t a problem right?” She was grasping at straws, they both knew that on some level Lucifer thought. But for now, for now it was okay. Even though it felt a lot like lying to himself, until they knew more, playing the ‘Guess what insane plan Mum is up to now’ game was going to require a lot of bluffing that things were okay and they didn’t suspect anything.

“I suppose. It would have been nice to get a starting point.” She ignored his attempt to get the topic away from his family for the time being. Lucifer didn’t feel ready to dissect the nitty-gritty details of the new dynamic. Mum had been so open and welcoming in his penthouse that night, but he couldn’t fully trust it. She’d gone back to his Father, stopped from going to her own universe, and if Father wanted to mend things with Mother surely he wanted to mend things with Lucifer. So why hadn’t Father reached out yet? What made reconciling with Mum more important than reconciling with Lucifer? Lucifer’s pain had been greater, Father had wanted to destroy him not just stick him in a forgotten corner of the cosmos. How could his mother get his father’s apologies but not Lucifer?

“Is your mother omnipotent? Omnipresent?” There was a small tone of urgency in her voice and it made him laugh.

“Been thinking naughty things about my Mum have you?” He got a glare in response and the Detective opened her mouth to scold him. Lucifer cut her off. “No, that’s my dad’s thing and it’s not really an omnipresent all the time. It gets hard to listen to, all the people screaming for him for different reasons, be it sex, danger, political arguments or stubbed toes. It’s more like he selectively tunes in when he wants to. Provides little nudges in all the right places. It’s on a different level of conscious” She did not seem reassured. “My Mum can’t just read your mind. If she did you would A) know she was in there rummaging around and B) be able to tell her to knock it off in person.” Her hands still gripped the steering wheel for dear life. “Mum’d have to go in knowing what she was looking for. Think of a mind like a long hallway and behind each door is a thought. She only goes in with the key for one thing, she can only find that door. She wants to look for another thing, she has to go back to the hallway and look for a different door with a different key.”

“So she can’t just grab my consciousness all at once and know everything I feel and think?” She seemed more re-assured, letting out whatever breath she had been holding. Clearly his Mum had scared her more than the Detective had let on initially, he would have to remedy that.

“No. Like I said, not a Jedi.”

She snorted. “Pretty sure that’s not how Jedi work.”

“If you kept up with the extended lore you’d know it’s a thing.” She stared at him, like the fact he watched science fiction was a crazy idea. “Maze liked them” He offered by way of explanation. He saw her suck in her breath again at the mention of his demon’s name. “She’s staying out of town for now. I told her we needed time.” No response. He tried again. “She tried to apologize to me. I believe at some point she will apologize to you.”

The remaining five minutes of their ride was spent in silence. Lucifer knew he had broken the spell, the progress they were on getting what Linda called ‘Weird Ass Celestial Stuff’ out of the way of their partnership was stalled again. He wished he could go back and undo it. He knew time was something the Detective required, all humans did. He knew he got over things faster than humans did, maybe it was experience or maybe it was because his life had never been peaceful. Lucifer had never had time to mull over things, to examine them until Earth, it was always one dilemma to the next for hundreds and thousands of years. But they had been making progress, Damn it to hell.

They eventually pulled down a narrow side road and went to the very end of the street. Unlike other glitzy parts of the city of angels, these homes had not been built to appreciate in value. Porches were held up by hope and duct-tape, peeling paint indicated the homes had seen much better days along with the rusty cars in the front yards. There were no trees, no shade to provide a rest from the beating sun. Despite being drowned in sunshine, this was one of the dark pieces of humanity on display, the sun a harsh spotlight. The darker sides of humanity, the part of it that suffered, had always reminded Lucifer of hell. Souls were trapped here, when Earth had so much greatness to offer, they were trapped in misery and no way to crawl out of it. And then when they took to less pious ways to escape the clutches of poverty, misery, abuse, and dependence, hell claimed them, hungry to collect on lives that had not been lived to their full extent. Humans here had never been allowed an even playing field, not in life and not in death. It burned him up inside, this agony over them never having the chance to prove themselves.

The house itself did not seem like a place that would contain a grisly crime scene they had been told to prepare themselves for. A once in a lifetime career event that you never got if you were fortunate. A wired chain link fence kept the front yard enclosed, though the dead dandelions were not about to escape. It looked like every other cookie cutter house on the street, light blue paint, a gravel driveway and a rusted and bent mailbox. Death and misery clung here; he could feel it in the way he could sense things. It made the shadows cast by windowsills and eves more menacing, the cracked dirty windows adding dread and the rattling screen door chiming in for dramatic effect. Streets like this usually always had someone outside, children playing in the street and neighbors watching each other. Crime scenes attracted humans, the desire of knowing what terrible thing had happened too great to resist. No one left their homes to observe this spectacle. Maybe they could sense the death. The Detective sensed the malvolence too, her posture tightening, an analytical glance around them to look for something useful. Crime scene technicians were all over the place, more technicians than Lucifer had ever seen deployed at once.

Lucifer tasted the metallic tang of blood before he entered the open front door, the drab yellow sheet-rock already stained with a large amount of blood. A clear hand-print had been sectioned off for analysis, the blood inking in what was hopefully the murder’s identity. The brown shag carpet from the early 1960s was deeply stained and from experience in hell Lucifer knew it ran deep enough that the concrete pad below the home would have to be ripped up to get it all out. Just like hell, all that was missing was the falling ash, smell of sulfur and the occasional demon making tracks through the ash.

And to think Maze had missed the place when it was in places like this tiny house.

The Detective was silent, reverential even. She always paid the utmost respect to their victims while usually Lucifer or Ella was the one who tried to crack a joke to lighten the mood. Not Today. He could hear Ms. Lopez quietly talking in the living room ahead and turned the corner, mentally bracing himself with images of some of Hell's worst to steel his nerves.

Not even reigning in Hell as King had prepared him for the moment. It still felt like a sucker punch, even if his face betrayed none of his inner thoughts. The room looked drenched, as though someone had created a fountain out of the victim, pieces of blood dripping from the ceiling. Lucifer felt there had to be more dead humans somewhere, the human body simply could not contain this much blood unless the killer had squeezed every bit out of the victim. Lucifer knew how to do it of course, it had been a thing he’d learned for keeping demons in line or particularly deserving human souls like despots, war criminals and pedophiles. But to do it on a living breathing human, that was something else. He’d known humans knew how, after all he hadn’t come up with the technique, but to see it again after so long was unnerving. There was blood spatter absolutely everywhere, there was nowhere to stand in the room without stepping in blood. Lucifer was suddenly thankful he had worn the slippers he had been handed after all, but privately didn’t even think they could stop his shoes from soaking it up. His red soled shoes may indeed be a different shade of red when this was over.

The victim was placed in the middle of the room, all furniture having been pushed to the walls. There wasn’t much, a few plastic chairs that had seen better days and wobbly table, probably serving as an ash tray. He had been surprised there was any furniture in it with the housing being a foreclosure and all. The woman was in a circle of some kind made of ash and dead daisies. Runes were drawn in the ash, though Lucifer wasn’t sure what the writer was trying to convey with them. Greek symbols and Chinese characters intermixed with Norse Runes and Arabic Scripts with hieroglyphs from Egyptians and the Pueblo scattered throughout. It made his brain hurt. Any wall not covered was covered in red writing, the letters having dripped into one another in the writer’s haste to get their message out.

Lucifer’s eyes picked up a few, pieces coming in from all different directions. All the languages were different but with so many residents of hell and so many wonderful works of knowledge, he’d taken to learning how to read a few. He’d lately focused on the less spoken and more dead languages lately partly of course because he could not stand his brother knew how to read Ancient Sumerian and he had not. It was unfortunately coming in handy.

_Dante-_ _“They yearn for what they fear for.”_

_Revelations 21:8 “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death”_

_Percy Bysshe Shelley_ _\- “Hell is a city much like London”_

_Matthew 25:46 – “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”_

_CS Lewis “_ _All that are in Hell, choose it.”_

_Matthew 10:8 “_ _And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul”_

_Psalms 145:20- “The LORD preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy.”_

_Dante- “Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the_ _other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.”_

Lucifer couldn’t take reading any more of them. The rage that bubbled up inside him, when people quoted the bible and other works of men in order to justify atrocities, size be damned. It didn’t matter if it was justifying one death or an entire group of people, it was wrong. This was the worst case they had ever worked, the one that had gotten under his skin like no other, not even the fake Satanist one. Rage coiled around his heart and Lucifer feared his true nature bursting forth in that tiny living room, screaming for blood. The blood of the monster who did this. What would the Detective have to say about a monster that hunted other monsters? What would humanity say?

“Lucifer.” Just concentrate on her voice, his pleaded with his mind, pushing the thoughts of rage down. She touched his shoulder, a light tap. He blinked away the red, quickly finding her lovely eyes. She was crying, soft streaks of makeup carving paths down her cheeks and realized she thought he was overcome with grief at the sight, not wrath. Grief was normal, human, bloodlust for another monster was not. He couldn’t remember her ever being so overwhelmed, she had always been a stoic professional. “Are you okay?” Even in this moment, she was focused on someone other than herself, which is why she was better than Lucifer would ever be. Maybe that was why he still had his Devil Face, that part of him that could be better had walked off with Cain.

His entire being screamed no. “I will be,” he mumbled, feeling tears prick at him too as the other emotions flooded in. This woman had died alone and in extreme pain for what? For a message, that was probably designed specifically to attract him? Someone was messing with him and this poor woman with lovely brown hair had died for it.

Lucifer wasn’t able to hold it in anymore when the techs turned to move the body and he saw who the face belonged to on the floor, recognizing the now visible tattoo of a dove on her shoulder. Her flayed, now skinless, back had been turned to the viewer in the entry way, her face and identifying features deemed not important by the writer. Her hands had been removed and discarded, and Lucifer knew by the blood pattern she had been alive during their sawing. They’d become an instrument for the writer, different pieces of her entire body had. Just an unwitting pawn, a civilian casualty in a war she had no part of. Her death had not been given any thought except to be a writing instrument. Not even her lovely brown eyes had escaped the fate, having been stabbed out for more bodily fluid to add to the writer’s work.

“Lucifer, what is it?” He heard Ms. Lopez ask but his brain was too busy malfunctioning, having momentarily forgotten how to work. He stumbled his way down the hall to the door, knees giving out only after he was sure they wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the crime scene. The dirt had suffered from the unyielding California drought, sending signals of pain up and down his legs. Lucifer paid them no mind. His pain wasn’t important right now and neither was the bile that was threatening to spill out of him. He could handle blood and gore, it had stopped turning his stomach millennia ago. But now it was personal, and it was the personal aspect he could not stomach.

He couldn’t get the face out of his head, his brain superimposing the new face over the memories of the victim’s old one. He forced himself to breathe, stay calm, to breathe but could already feel pieces of his other self, inching their way out, demanding to be released, demanding vengeance, some blood any blood that would balance the scales. He kept his eyes pressed into his hands which became hidden by his jacket. He could feel the fires of hell burning through them, shifting back and forth between his original face and the one hell had granted him. Pieces down his body did the same thing, entire patches of skin changing back and forth. He buried his head into his hands and pulled his body into a ball, walling himself off from being seen with his legs and suit jacket. He could feel the stares and mumbles of those around him; but focused solely on regaining control of himself. He had to maintain control. The Detective would hate him if he lost it here, in front of everyone.

Sometime later he heard the footsteps approach and peeked out between his shins and fingers to see two pairs of women’s legs, one wearing slacks and the other wearing jeans come into his view. The ones wearing jeans were attached to a hand holding a water bottle which was gently placed by his side. After a few tense moments he let his hands down to grab it, feeling the cool bottle soothe a bit of the fire under his skin and sighed in relief when there was no instant recoiling at the sight of him.

“Hey buddy, this was a bad scene. It happens” Of course Ella would try to cheer him up even when she herself looked to be on the edge of vomiting up her breakfast. She always was trying to look on the bright side. If she didn’t happen to have brothers and having not been adopted he would have believed she was an angel. Bloody optimists.

Ignoring the water bottle he reached inside his jacket for his flask only to find out for the second time that day he hadn’t brought it. What a great choice that had been. He begrudgingly drank the water down, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he sucked the drink down.

“I know her. Who she is.” Seeing their surprised looks he realized he had to tell them everything right away. “Her name is- was Cecilia. I met her very early in my time in Los Angeles. She was sixteen but pretended to be eighteen, trying to get a job as a dancer in Lux. She was running away from an abusive family from somewhere awful, Utah I think.” The Detective nodded, encouraging him to keep going, telling him anything he knew would be helpful. “I didn’t hire her as a dancer but I gave her a favor, I helped her get on her feet to finish high school, go to college.” The words came pouring out of him, gaining octaves in pitch as he went. “She’s supposed to be at UCLA getting a chemistry degree to be a doctor. She doesn’t even live here; I pay for her apartment by campus. Why is she here? She’s not supposed to be here!” No one had answers for him.

Breathing had suddenly become very difficult and Lucifer could feel himself hurting to breathe. He saw it in souls all the time in hell, the sheer panic and overwhelming truth of the situation too much to bear. She’d been a girl when Lucifer had met her, hell he had a hard time believing she was even sixteen with how small she had been. Something about her had struck him, maybe it was the panic when he inquired about how old she actually was, his inquiries about her family. A kindred spirit out in the world, running from her past for survival. The girl who was dead in that living room had nearly died at the hands of her family multiple times, survived it and other horrors, fled with fifty dollars and the clothes on her back, spent her last dollar getting to Lux to audition for a job she knew she wouldn’t get but had to try out of desperation. Then she survived all that came with starting over, getting a new place to stay, legally finishing high school and changing her name, getting her records sealed to become invisible to her tormentors in her former life, getting accepted into college, all to become a prop in the story some psychotic deranged human wanted to tell.

It wasn’t fair. She was supposed to have met someone to love, had a circle of people who loved her, saved countless lives as a doctor. Her entire life snuffed out because some lunatic wanted to use her as a writing utensil.

He could feel the Detective pulling him towards their car, saying all the things he heard her say to victims before, her body stumbling a bit on the uneven asphalt. She pulled the door open and dropped him in it, pausing before she decided to lean down, as though a thought had suddenly struck her. Whatever it had been she ignored and she took Lucifer’s hands in her own, though his were much larger than her’s. “We’ll find this monster okay?” She was crying now too and it took noticing her tears for Lucifer to feel his own still there, having not yet evaporated from the raging inferno under his skin.

“Lucifer, I promise.” The Detective took a deep steadying breath. “This murderer needs to face justice for what he did.” Lucifer nodded with her, the tension in his jaw tightening. He could be justice. That was what he did now wasn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovely readers, Thank you for sticking with me. I read all your comments and look at kudos and get all happy when I see people enjoying my story. It really means a lot to me someone else takes time to read what I've written.
> 
> I have to pass a bunch of finals this upcoming week and work so no chapters for a bit unfortunately. This one ended up being pretty long though so hopefully that makes up for it.


	6. Chapter 5

Chloe wasn’t afraid of Lucifer per say. At this moment slumped in the passenger’s seat, he looked like she was used to, calm and detached. But back in the house he had been something else, the rage scaring out a newer tech. She hadn’t seen his other half emerge, maybe a few tricks of the light when looking at his face his eyes had been red, but well, maybe that was normal. She had barely touched him, hoping to offer comfort at the scene and gotten a look that, if she had been anyone else, reminded her that he would have torn them apart without a second thought.

It only got worse on his discovery he knew the victim. Cecilia, from the sounds of it had everything in her life going for her after a tragic past. He’d intervened in her fate and made her better for it. And though he didn’t say it, Chloe knew he felt like it was his fault.

While she and her fellow officers reacted with grief at the young woman, Lucifer had reacted with rage. A lot of times at murder scenes that had been his go to response. That or casual indifference. Originally they had just assumed there was something wrong with him emotionally or his normal-meter was off and he didn’t know how to react to what they had been called to. She supposed it made sense for a being with no concept of death, there was nothing to be sad about to him because he knew where people went. The uncertainty in death for him was gone, he knew one way or another for sure where they would go. There was no mourning the idea of lost time, because for him, time was probably not a big deal.

All that he had left in grief was anger.

“It was him you know.” He wasn’t looking at her, now playing with the black ring on his hand, twisting it around and around. He hadn’t looked her in the face since she had put him in the car, at first Chloe had thought it was pouting at being put in a time-out but she realized now he had needed a break from the scene and collecting his thoughts. “He’s sending us a message.”

What a message. “What message?” Chloe inquired, not needing to ask who the he Lucifer was referring to was. Cain. Marcus Pierce. It made her feel sick to her stomach, she’d slept with the man who did that. Let her kid around the man who did that. Torture and murder didn’t seem to be enough of a word to describe the horror that was in the house. It made her want to vomit, the disgust in her person was so physical. Chloe wanted to burn the house, salt the earth beneath it, something to take the hold of blood away. Maybe put something in the ground to symbolize the terrible thing that had happened. She’d never been one for horror movies but after that house she could buy the idea that some places just should be left alone after a tragedy. Were ghosts real? Another question to ask for a better time.

His hands ran through his hair, turning to study her. “I’m not leaving. Stop looking. I’ll be back.” He seemed to be waiting on some kind of reaction from her, but she wasn’t sure what else besides revulsion she had to offer him. “I’d guess it was cartel related if not for the victim and the stupid amount of writing on the wall.” Oh he thought she didn’t believe him still and needed to explain as opposed to her taking time to digest the idea the man who had been so gentle with her was capable of a bloodbath. “Not a lot of people can capture that kind of brutality.” He stopped and studied her again, as though whatever he was looking for in her reaction he wasn’t finding. He looked back out the window at the surrounding landscape when she didn’t instantly respond.

“So this is his way of reaching out to us?” He just nodded, making a small noise of affirmation.

They were driving to the victim’s apartment, hoping it would offer clues as to how Cain had found Cecilia or whether her death was a horrible irony. Lucifer had been adamant in his insistence that it was not her family of origin, and privately Chloe agreed. A fundamentalist Christian group would have used the Bible only, and it would have been more focused on punishing sinners, not the concept of hell. The more she looked at the living room, the more she was convinced the area had been specifically designed to attract the two of them. Her consultant was known as an expert on Abrahamic-religions, and when Lucifer told her all the passages on the wall referred to hell, well it didn’t take an evil genius to know the crime was meant for their attention. Which went back to his belief that it was his fault the victim died even though he’d had nothing to do with her death.

She had forbidden Lucifer from going back into the house, telling him he would work off photographs taken by the techs who worked under Ella’s watchful eye. He’d started to protest but it stopped when he saw the look on her face. From then on, he had only sat in the car, quiet. She hoped she was doing the right thing, not letting him back in there when the sight of it upset him so much. He’d scared Ella even, the woman had a hushed conversation with Chloe where Ella insisted Chloe not leave him alone. Ella’s exact words were “I see a darkness in him” making Chloe wonder if Ella had figured it out now. Lucifer had been adamant herself and Linda were the only people who knew but Chloe wouldn’t have put it past Ella to have figured it out. Everyone it seemed had seen that darkness, the pieces buried underneath that had run hell without mercy.

It made her more scared of him than his face had. Chloe knew now that he was holding back, drawing back away from what he truly was all those moments in the past. All those time’s she’d rushed in after bad guys, telling him to stay back because he was a civilian seemed so silly now. For a long time she had felt comfortable being the one in the partnership that took people down, literally. It unsettled her to know he had stopped using being super strong and stealthy in order to allow her to do so. She’d always been hyper paranoid about other men on the force not treating her like an equal when she maybe should have been more worried about her partner’s abilities. It was a big glaring reminder he wasn’t human, that the instinct to punish the person responsible had sprung up again so quickly and seemingly without him really noticing. She almost wanted to let him. He had reminded her of a cat with his pacing around, his features keeping a blank face that just barely showed the rage underneath it. Even a being as old as time itself felt anger at something this horrific, which both calmed and terrified her at the same time. Calming because it meant he had not been dulled to the horrors of the world and frightening because of how many he’d seen and then had to take blood from in kind.

He was puzzling over pictures sent to him on the ride over, having not argued with her order. Another thing Chloe found weird, he was the Lord of hell, and he did what she asked him to when he wanted to do something else. There had been no smartass remark, no eyebrow wiggle or a comment about how authoritative she was being. She hated it. The behavior was abnormal and it was just another giant glaring neon sign that said “HEY CHLOE, I’M A LITERAL ANGEL AND YOU DIDN’T NOTICE FOR YEARS! SOME DETECTIVE YOU ARE!”

“So-“ She started slowly, having started to speak before she was ready with what to say “What are we going to do with Cain when we find him?”

“Give him a one way ticket to hell of course” Lucifer didn’t even look up, more focused on reading something that was written in characters. He made it sound so easy. Like it was just as easy as running some errands or going to pick up dinner.

“So we’re not going to throw him in prison?”

That got his attention. Then he sighed, as though he had been waiting for her to ask that question. “No Detective we’re not. Give him enough time and he’ll either figure a way out or raise enough questions about coming back to life after getting shanked he would get some super-secret high level government team on us.” Well that made sense. She hadn’t thought about that part, that people would start asking questions when he didn’t age or when he didn’t die. They could explain away his most recent death with the excuse of some weird medical phenomena, but a second time? Hell no. It made her wonder about Lucifer, how many photographs did he appear in, how many times had he walked among humanity and then left pieces of himself behind? Most artistic representations had him blonde and blue eyed but some, some had him with dark eyes and dark hair. She’d wondered if they had met the real thing.

“Doesn’t it bother you he won’t face justice for his crimes?” Right after she asked it; she knew she had asked the wrong question. He didn’t scold her, but she could see his body tense up.

That was what started him talking again. “Justice here on Earth Detective. Not cosmic justice.” He flipped to the next photo which was written in what appears to be either Italian or French. “Besides, justice here on Earth has gotten rather tame comparatively speaking. Hell is where he belongs.” Hell was also supposed to be where he belonged, but Chloe knew Lucifer didn’t truly belong there. He was too good of a person, he cared about right and wrong and helped others. But if he didn’t belong there, that terrifying creature made of red and scars, where did he belong? Earth didn’t seem like the right answer but there was no other. A medium place? Or maybe he did belong to hell and she just hadn’t seen this side of him. Hadn’t been looking. But that thought didn’t feel right either because she knew him, had for years.

It made her frown. “Blood for blood then?”

“Yes Detective, exactly. Hell uses his sins and uses them to punish himself. Even if he claims he isn’t feeling any guilt over it, hell will eventually find a way that gets to him, even if it spends a thousand years or so dumping him in a lake of fire in the process to figure it out.” It was so casual, as though the idea of people being dunked into lakes of actual fire didn’t bother him. Maybe, her brain reasoned, that was because he went through one with his skin. Of course being burned over your entire body and then healing would make a lake of fire seem like no big deal. Lucifer had always run towards dangerous things, people with guns, knives, like it didn’t bother him in the slightest. And why would it after a while if you’ve been through everything, quite literally ever weapon ever. But by that same logic why wouldn’t it bother Cain?

“So if hell is basically autonomous, why are you there? Why are there demons?” They were going down a road Chloe knew they could not come back from and she didn’t want him to be feeling like she was judging. Classic Chloe Decker, putting everyone else’s emotional needs ahead of her own. She had done it with her mother, done it with Dan and was doing it in this conversation right here. She wanted to know, desperately wanted to know all the answers but she didn’t want to hurt him in her pursuit of them. Even if it stung and hurt like, well like hell, he hadn’t trusted her with the information in the first place.

He was quiet a few moments before answering Chloe wondered if she had offended him. “Demons and myself are for when hell just isn’t enough. When people don’t have guilt or don’t feel bad enough for the things they’ve done, the people they’ve hurt. Something has to punish pure evil and the job is too awful for the rest of my family, Amenadiel couldn’t stand doing it for a few years, let alone thousands of them. Keep in mind his feathered ass didn’t even actually do anything, just went down and made sure no doors were open that shouldn’t be.” He paused, trying to find words. “Alternatively, sometimes the system gets it wrong and needs to be rebalanced. But its mostly the first one.” Some small bright side. Chloe remembered Ella’s question from a long time ago, ‘if the devil punishes evil, isn’t he a good guy?’.

She couldn’t wait for her shift to be over and it was only her first day back and half past two. The victims apartment would be the last stop before heading home, getting to spend some quality time with Trixie and just sitting with her own thoughts. It had been a lot to take in.

The apartment complex was near campus, Chloe reasoned it was probably student housing or catered mostly to students. She’d made an inquiry or two about who owned it, only to get Lucifer’s response that he did. Well that was reasonable in Lucifer’s way, why give money to one girl to rent an apartment when you could buy a whole complex of them and rent one out for free? It would have been nice to know earlier so she could get someone else out here so there would be no legal issues in the DA’s office. Chloe knew logically it wouldn’t matter but it was still a headache. Their old DA had come back after Charlotte’s death, some Alan Rickman as Snape look-alike. His appearance was where the resemblance to the actor had stopped though, he had been way too interested in getting coffee with her after news of her impending divorce had traveled around the station. He had sent her a condolences email about Charlotte then written how happy he was to be working together with her again. Usually Lucifer had scared off creeps but this one hadn’t been brave enough to say anything to her face that wasn’t work related.

The leasing office was brightly decorated, minimalist abstract art on the walls, light fixtures that were supposed to be trendy that were sold by the dozen. The leasing agent looked surprised to see them, but bounced right into her happy “welcome to the Phoenix apartment living complex, how can we help you?” She had to be a student herself, Chloe didn’t know if she was old enough to drive let alone work a front desk at an apartment complex.

Lucifer hung back, pretending to be interested in something on the wall, a mural of nearby restaurants and attractions. Again, letting Chloe take the lead in an area where he could have gone in and gotten all the information they needed incredibly quickly. With the way the agent was looking at him he could have asked the girl to jump and her only response would have been ‘how high?’. He used to never hold back using his talent to glean information unless she specifically asked. It was bizarre.

“I’m Detective Decker and this is my partner. We’re investigating the death of Cecilia James. We were hoping to take a look at her apartment.” A woman who had to be the office manager peeked out of a nearby office, looking confused and annoyed. Chloe couldn’t blame her, deaths were never good for business but playing dumb would only slow them down.

“You all don’t talk to each other?” The office manager was a tight-lipped blonde woman, and was waving a particularly accusatory finger at the two of them. Lucifer was holding back but paying attention now, Chloe could hear him move to stand behind her. Lucifer had many times walked up behind her without her hearing him, he had to be making noise on purpose. Just another thing that had changed between them.

“We just discovered Cecilia this afternoon. May I ask the name of the officer you spoke with please?” The woman scoffed at her and the front desk agent had the sense to realize something bad was afoot.

“It wasn’t a policeman.” She said, going through her notes, trying to impress the two of them with what she had. “It was an FBI agent named John Lake. He left his contact information here. If you hurry you can catch him, he just got here about fifteen minutes ago. He has one of the keys for the unit” The front desk woman handed over everything and Chloe silently thanked whatever she had started thanking since knowing God was a real thing. The LAPD had tried for years to get businesses to take in that kind of information but few ever really bothered. Even if it was fake info there could be some small lead in there, a burner phone number, some tell, a maker of fake identification.

“We’ll be right back.” Lucifer said headed out of the office towards a building near the back of the complex. Of course, he’d been here before. Chloe started to follow but something on the paper caught her eye. She thought she was a bit crazy at first but it was enough to make her stop in her tracks just outside the office.

Lake had been the officer assigned to the Sinnerman and was part of their serial offenders task force. The fact he may have caught the case didn’t seem too strange to Chloe, especially considering the religious nature and the fact sometimes the FBI didn’t join in on cases until the body had been processed. Sometimes wires got crossed and they didn’t get to the case first, that wasn’t what was strange. What was strange was that his call back number was wrong. All FBI phone numbers from the LA office had a distinct phone number pattern, the first three digits were the Los Angeles office area code, the next three digits were unique to the FBI and the last four numbers were to reach specific individuals or people.

“Hey Lucifer wait” she started but he was already gone. Something in her gut told her things were off and after spending what felt like too long digging for her phone confirmed she was right.

Agent Lake had a number out of the Quantico office. Which meant his number shouldn’t match any Los Angeles number. Even if he had been reassigned in the past two weeks, which he hadn’t mentioned, there was no way he had new business cards printed or his work cellphone changed that quickly. If anything, justice on the federal pace worked slowly unless there were lives at stake in the moment.

Chloe pressed call on her cellphone, hoping he picked up. It may be nothing, maybe they had gotten a new administration system, but she wasn’t about to be embarrassed at potentially bothering a member of the FBI over a weird number.

He picked up after one ring. “Hey Decker, you consider that job offer?”

“Different kind of business call. I have a homicide and someone at the victim’s apartment complex claims to have spoken to you in person a few minutes ago. You don’t happen have a new Los Angeles phone do you?”

“No.” Shit.

Chloe started running off in the direction she had seen Lucifer walk towards, temporarily ignoring the agent asking repeatedly for her location on the other end and the fact she had no idea which apartment she was looking for. Chloe hung up on him after offering up a rushed “will explain later”.

Of course it was a fucking trap. She saw it now all so clearly. A perfect victim who would get Lucifer and herself all angry and they would run off to investigate her death instantly. Hell they had probably been watching them at the crime scene somehow, they’d need to do a sweep of all the electronics and the police networks and maybe use a new phone and

Her mind registered the fireball before her brain did. The explosion, coming out of the walls of a second story apartment was forceful enough to send her backwards. She felt like she was lying down for hours before her training kicked in. Get up if you can and look for others.

“Lucifer! Lucifer!” Chloe could feel herself screaming but the whole world was quiet. It was as though the entire world had gone silent in that very moment. Just her, her thoughts and the general terribleness around them. She kept waving off people who had come to stare and gawk at the dark inferno in front of her, people who probably didn’t know any better. She had to get to him, to find him and make sure he was okay.

He’d told her she made him vulnerable, but surely there were exceptions to such weaknesses like right now. It made no practical sense, her being a form of human kryptonite. Chloe shuddered at the thought of making his human form look like his devil one. Could he even survive the amount of burns it would take?

Right, other priorities.

Sounds were starting to flicker in and out again, Chloe could hear distant screaming and yelling but it cut out before she was able to process where it was coming from. The wreckage in front of her was on fire and full of sharp and jagged pieces but Chloe didn’t feel the pain going through her hands as she fought her way to the stairwell. She had to get through the wall of building wreckage in order to get to the other side where Lucifer surely would be. Pieces of sheet rock and wood and glass tore at her hands but she didn’t care. She had one objective.

A pair of hands stopped her from lifting a large piece and Chloe came face to face with Amenadiel for the first time since knowing what he was. He carefully pressed a piece of cloth on her hands, and pull her away from the fire. Amenadiel kept trying to talk to her, tell her something using his mouth and hands but Chloe kept screaming over him. “Lucifer. Amenadiel, we need to find him. We need to find him now”

He looked at her oddly then took in a deep breath and the flames stopped moving in front of her. The wind didn’t blow and the time froze. Chloe didn’t understand what he was doing until he looked in another direction and said something through the fire and then instantly looked concerned. Chloe couldn’t hear if he got a response from the wreckage or what he was looking for because Amenadiel had left her again, miming at her to stay put.

Time literally did not move for the time he was gone; Chloe wouldn’t have been able to tell if it had been minutes or hours or any time at all. It made her giggle a bit at the thought which in turn made her ribs hurt. That would be shock her brain helpfully chimed in. Chloe trusted Amenadiel, but it still felt like an awful long time before she saw his silhouette through the flames emerging again from the wreckage holding up a limping Lucifer.

He looked terrible. His suit jacket was completely gone, some small pieces of shredded and charred fabric clinging to his body, the light colored shirt was now darkened with soot and stuck to his body in a place that appeared to be bleeding. His expression was dazed, and he looked right through her as though he didn’t see her.

Amenadiel pulled out a wing and it dazzled her again for the moments it was out. Up until now she had assumed all angel wings looked like Lucifer’s. That had, as it turned out, been a silly assumption. Unlike his brother’s, Amenadiel’s wings were darkly colored, but instead of a cool glint that reminded her of starlight they reminded her of volcanos and lava or warm fire embers. They were something more familiar than alien to her, more Earth-like than something of the sky, but they still unnerved her. And they were still every bit as breathtaking.

Without hesitation he yanked a few feathers out, the long pieces reminding her of quills from Harry Potter or old writing instruments she had seen at museums. He gently pressed one into his younger brother’s side and there was a small flicker of light before clear skin was revealed to be below.

Chloe shouted for Lucifer before hearing just how loud she was and lowering her voice to a normal volume. His head moved in her direction, looking for the sound of her voice, conscious good. Amenadiel pulled him over towards the center of the courtyard, moving him away from the still inferno, the evidence inside the apartment going up in smoke. But right now that didn’t matter, what did matter was that he was alive and in relatively one piece.

Chloe trotted over, trying to give him the once over as she went for basic medical treatment. He’d had a lot of blood coming from his front and a spot on his thigh, though thanks to magical wing feathers, Chloe noted he was no longer bleeding. Of course the wings were magic, Chloe’s tired brain thought, they had to be to get from place to place. Lucifer pulled at her arm, “I opened the door and it exploded” He was yelling too, his own senses having not come back to him just yet, just like her. “He rigged it”

Amenadiel studied them closely before giving Chloe a once over. “I’ll come by later. There’s no one else inside. He doesn’t have any more major injuries but just in case,” Lucifer’s older brother pressed two wing feathers into her hands, and Chloe stuck them in her jacket’s inner pocket, feeling how special they were and what it was he was giving her. She felt a little bit like a girl again having received a precious toy on Christmas. They were surprisingly heavy for feathers, feeling more like a pen than a feather should.

But then again what did she know about how heavy or not heavy angel wing feathers should be?

With acknowledgement of his declaration the world resumed and Amenadiel was gone like he had never been there, not even leaving footsteps in the grass. Flames moved again, sirens wailed through the distance and on-lookers gawked. The sudden noise of the world made her startle, having temporarily forgotten how loud everything was and just how loud Lucifer could yell.

Lucifer was still on the ground, preferring it to getting up. Chloe sat down next to him, telling him how it was okay, he wasn’t majorly hurt and the ambulance would be here soon. He kept screaming at her it had exploded and he was supposed to be fire proof.

* * *

The FBI had met them at the hospital, Lucifer quickly whisked away to check for internal bleeding, and Chloe followed the agents into another part of the hospital to check for injuries like deep bruising, making her wonder just how far away she had to be for vulnerability to kick in.

Her phone was somehow still working, and she’d used it to call Dan and Ella, and arranged for someone to pick up Trixie. In crisis, Chloe Decker did not shut down and melt into the floor, she acted. The FBI agents kept telling her she could take a break and the Doctor’s did too but she was determined to get through it. To avoid thinking about just how bad that situation could have been. Would God think it was her fault if Lucifer got killed near her? Would he blame her for it?

The FBI had told her Cecilia’s death was to be declared a Federal case, the justification it had been the Sinnerman making it a case that had crossed state lines due to a murderer in multiple state jurisdictions or something. Bureaucracy had never really made sense but she privately was relieved. It stung inside, knowing the horrible fate the poor girl had endured and that she would not be able to bring to justice the monster responsible, but the knowledge he would at least be held accountable helped. Lucifer had assured her cosmic justice was going to happen and Chloe didn’t doubt him. She had always held out hope that bad things happened to bad people eventually. What she was concerned with was the victims here on Earth. Making sure people alive knew what had happened to them, that they weren’t forgotten. That even as time went on, people remembered things that had happened and did not forget the darkness and the lives it claimed. What good was justice if it didn’t bring about long term peace, if it was forgotten about in the end? What good was holding Cain responsible for Cecilia if people forgot Cecilia?

Someone, Ella had brought her coffee, while they sat in the waiting room. Lucifer had protested he was fine, that his wings had taken the brunt of the fire and that they were fire proof anyway. He made no mention of his brother, Chloe wondered if he even remembered Amenadiel pulling him from the inferno. Regardless, none of the ER doctors bought his story and wanted to transfer him to a psych ward before Chloe had managed to explain to them something that sounded half possible, that he spoke in metaphors and had a flair from the dramatic. That he turned to those metaphors when he was feeling uncomfortable or vulnerable. After the threat of an impending psych hold was removed, they’d whisked him off to do several scans, all the while Lucifer complaining about contrast being worse than most things he’d ever tried and his insistence he be told what it was made of so he could give it to demons who annoyed him.

Amenadiel appeared again out of nowhere, joining them in the waiting room without any explanation as to how he got there. She knew he had a phone but no one had called him on it and Lucifer’s emergency contact had been changed to herself from Maze at some point apparently. Chloe had wondered aloud if they should call Maze but Amenadiel’s face suggested they not. Chloe fired off a message anyway, the first she’d sent in a long time. The old messages weren’t deleted, and were something about the apartment, some small thing Chloe couldn’t remember. She’d sent a brief one, there had been an explosion at a case they were working, she might see it on the news but they were both safe and Chloe was letting her know because Lucifer’s phone was broken in the process.

An almost instant reply, wanting to speak to Lucifer. No asking if anyone was okay, or if there had been other fatalities, just a demand to speak to Lucifer.

Chloe sighed. She couldn’t fault Maze, not for this anyway. Maze was something she was probably never going to figure out but she did understand there was a bond there. It was mean to withhold him from her even if Chloe was upset, right? Besides, if Chloe didn’t give the demon an update she would probably not hesitate to level the hospital in order to get information.

She messaged back she was going to try and see him and to hang on a bit. The phone rang almost instantly but she declined it. She didn’t need Maze in her ear for this, let alone dealing with all the medical nonsense.

Chloe made her way through the nurses’ station, stating she was Lucifer’s partner. She knew they were only letting her in because of what kind of partner they thought she was, the look in the womens’ faces that she had never before understood starting to click in her brain. They were jealous of the fact that Chloe had his attention. Some of their faces reminded Chloe of older kids at the park who had wanted some toy of Trixie’s that she was playing with. It made her walk just a bit faster down the hall. Chloe couldn’t imagine having almost every interaction with people being one in which they want something from you, it seemed it would be exhausting.

“Detective!” His voice boomed happily, still a bit louder than was probably needed. He looked like an extra for a tv show, not an actual medical patient. There were some delicate butterfly bandages covering a cut through his eyebrow, and he looked much better than anyone should in a sack they called a hospital gown. He was hooked up to an IV, but nothing scary looking which Chloe took to mean he was fine. “Did you know people these days are getting IVs to cure hangovers? It’s astonishing!” She smiled at him; every little piece of information had used to remind her of a child in a way. When they had met, he had spent five years already in Los Angeles yet there had been so much he didn’t know about the world, so much that had been alien to him. He reacted to every discovery with equal enthusiasm, whether he was disgusted or confused.

“How do you feel?” she asked but it was an easy question. His hair was all messed up and his eyebrows looked a little burnt but except for that he looked irritatingly perfect. It just made Chloe realize how much of a mess she was, bandages on both palms from digging in wreckage and some potential hearing loss.

He snorted, “I’m fine. Bloody doctor won’t let me leave.” He looked at her, carefully studying her. The fact she was in the clothes from earlier seeming to annoy him. “They’re making me spend the night but not you?” He gave her a look Trixie used to give her when she was protesting something “Not fair.” He played with the edge of his blanket before brightening back up. “How long was I out?” he teased, making her actually smile at him out of amusement.

“Ten years.” She replied, mocking him and smiling wider at his feigned look of shock. “You’re only awake because your other doctor had to transfer, we found out he was keeping you asleep because he had a crush.” Lucifer stuck his tongue out at her and Chloe returned the expression.

The light moment was as gone as quickly as it had come, like a brief flame. The darkness settled on them again and Lucifer returned to playing with the blanket. He kept sneaking looks at her and Chloe went at sat at the foot of his bed, resting her hand next to his.

“No one else got hurt.” She told him and noticed his shoulder slump a bit at the news. Why had no one told him earlier? Surely he’d wanted to know, even if humans were probably like ants to him, or maybe like a pet dog. You were sad when they died and at the idea of them dying, but it happened so much more often than it did with people. Did that make Chloe a pet? Maze had called her one often enough. “You picked a good time to open the door.”

He grumbled. “I should have seen it coming. He told me about this one move he picked up from KGB that caused death upon entry when we were going over ways he had tried dying.” He threw his hands down, frustrated. “I barely got the wings out and I still had to get dragged out of there by his high and mightiness.”

“I was coming but wouldn’t have gotten there in time,” she tried to reassure him but if anything, he looked more horrified at the suggestion. Chloe felt like she had done something wrong.

“No Chloe. If something like that happens again you run.” His gaze was steady and expression serious. “I can be immortal with enough distance; I will be fine. You on the other hand,” to prove his point he picked up her arm, running a finger over the bandages. “Are not.”

His touch felt warm and it was the first time since the night she had cried on him they had touched. They’d carefully maneuvered around themselves all day, but he was reaching out to her, wanting to touch her, reassure himself she was there. Her body didn’t flinch like she had feared it would, and his fingers felt the same as they always had. His skin was warm, much too warm now she realized for a normal person. 

He pulled his hand back. “I want your word if this happens again you will do that.” She vehemently protested, but he ignored her outrage and remained almost serenely patient. How he could do that when he complained after 2 minutes of being bored on a stake out Chloe would never understand. He cocked his head at the end of her tirade “Have you gotten it all out?” almost as though she was Trixie throwing a fit.

“How can you ask that of me? To leave you behind?” It was alien, it went against everything she had known as a police officer and as a friend. You don’t leave people behind, ever. It’s that simple, being a public servant was putting other people first.

“Like this.” He picked up her hand again. “Chloe Decker, I want your word that if the need arises, you will leave me behind and save yourself. I’m immortal, there is literally no point in needlessly endangering yourself. I’ve tried to tell you before but with the current issue I really must insist.”

“But that’s not a deal,” she weakly protested, and he grinned that stupid boyish grin of his he wore when he knew he had won an argument. He was right, on a deeper logical level she knew he was right. But it felt wrong. Really wrong. He covered her wrapped hand with both of his and sighed.

“Call it an IOU.” He was getting excited at the thought. “A free favor from the Devil. Same rules as genies though, not falling in love, no back from the dead, no more wishes. You get the gist.”

She sighed as her phone vibrated again, pulling her hand out of his to check it. Maze again. She’d called multiple times in the few minutes since Chloe had first messaged her.

“Your phone got destroyed and I sent Maze a courtesy message that we were both fine.” He looked interested at that, like the possibility of her reaching out to Maze was foreign though Chloe couldn’t fathom why. She’d been on the outs with plenty of people a bunch of times but would still want to know they were okay if they were in an explosion rigged up by a crazy person. “She wants a phone conversation.”

“Bloody hell.” He grumbled, swiping the phone and clicking to answer. “Decker’s house of fun, fire has been temporarily banned. Lucifer speaking.” She rolled her eyes at him, getting up to give him some space.

“I’m just going to go to the vending machine,” she mouthed, and he nodded, half paying attention to her. She sighed, setting her stuff down and fishing out her wallet. Maybe the machine had something that wasn’t health conscious, Lucifer would have thrown a fit if she brought him back something like a yogurt bar. She could hear the whining now, ‘I don’t need to eat healthy; I have a supernatural metabolism.’

Thankfully after a wrong turn down a hall she managed to locate the machine which did in fact have yogurt bars, but they also had the ranch puffs he ate by the bag. After messing with the machine to take her crumbled dollar bills and grabbing a tea from the drink vending machine for her own headache, she wandered her way back, stopping by the waiting room to tell everyone he was fine and just grumpy at being told to stay overnight. She told Trixie she was just going to drop these things off and then it would be time for movie night, to which Trixie asked for the fourth time in a row if they could watch Frozen.

But Chloe thought a distraction right now was probably a good thing. After all, she was starting to be able to memorize the movie at this point and Trixie still was at the age where her mother saying things and singing during the movie didn’t embarrass her. She would order pizza and Trixie could do her homework while Chloe cleaned up a bit more and then they could watch Anna and Elsa save the kingdom.

Upon returning to the room Chloe at first had thought she had gone in the wrong one, as it had been empty. After circling back from the nurse’s station, thinking maybe she just needed to ask again she went back into the room, noting the patient name of L. Moringstar on all the charts and white board. Her jacket was neatly folded in the seat, different from how she’d left it laying and her purse sat next to it when before it had been on the floor.

The phone lay right in the middle of the bed and Chloe nervously swiped it open, coming to the camera being the last app opened and quickly pressing play on the last recording it had taken.

“Sorry for the jailbreak darling.” He sounded rushed even though he was trying to appear calm. The phone then had gotten tossed onto the bed, the IV machine starting to beep as he must have been unplugging it. He was acting as though hospitals were a normal thing to be breaking out of, especially after having an explosion. “He” and Lucifer’s face came back into view on the screen, looking particularly grim. “Has Maze. And the usual bad guy stuff, I need to come at once, I need to come alone, blah blah blah.” He acted annoyed but she knew him well enough to know he was upset, to know he wasn’t okay at what was going on.

He was a being that held choice above all else, the freedom to make your own destiny incredibly important to him. Which is why she knew his self control was cracking, the rage from earlier bubbling out, the explosion, and now this. He was being forced to react over and over and over again, having no control over the situation and no chance to catch his own footing.

“Stay with my brother, the Spawn too. And use my loft, ask Patrick about security mode.” Screen-Lucifer asked. He smiled then, though it wasn’t the fun smile, it was the one he got when they were closing in on a perp. “Now you’ll have two IOUs.”

No Damn it, Damn it all to hell. She ran back outside to the waiting room, frantically telling the agents in charge of their case who were still waiting to speak to Lucifer what happened and then it seemed like a pandemonium broke out. The agents had taken her phone, assuring her they were going to try to discover where the call had originated and that she would get it back in a few moments, Ella and Dan were both in her face simultaneously telling her they wanted to help her, Amenadiel had picked up Trixie at the young girl’s request, telling her that both Maze and Lucifer would be fine. Meanwhile the nurse’s station had just discovered they had a patient go missing and the loud speakers were asking all patients to return to their rooms, and instructions to medical personnel to make sure the exits got closed off in case he was in fact taken by force.

Chloe internally swore. Today was just the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends, finals beat me down but I'm back with another chapter. Hopefully they stay more consistent now with me not having school at night. 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! I'll stop beating them up in the next chapter but this is getting much longer than I had anticipated.


	7. Chapter 6

As far as first days back had gone, this one had gone awry pretty spectacularly. He had wanted a case that had proved to the Detective that he was not the creature mythos had made him out to be and rather something less awful. A friendly neighborhood monster if such things existed. The thing that scared off other creatures of dread and horror to keep the world worry-free. Sort of like a police officer even, keeping the evil and miserable at bay and making sure they faced justice for their actions. A celestial police officer sounded much better than eternal torturer, leader of the damned, and the end all be all of evil.

Instead that entire idea had been shot metaphorically to hell. They had a truly traumatizing first case and then he had gone and gotten a literal bomb blown up in their face. If anything, today had been a giant list of reasons she had been right to run away from him and the chaos that surrounded him. Her initial tepid acceptance of the new way of things would be gone when he returned. He’d even needed his brothers intervention, though Lucifer knew he could have pulled his way out of it, given enough moments to catch his bearings, the Detective would have undoubtedly been hurt in her desperate attempt to reach him. That was unacceptable.

She was oscillating back and forth and he was never sure how she would prefer him to act around her. Like a human, or was that too much like lying about what he was? The annoying voice in his head that had begun sounding like Linda suggested he just ask her, but well, things were going sort of well by just winging it for the moment. It would simply not do to ruin it by asking “do you want me to pretend I’m human again or should I just act like the creature that I am?”

Lucifer found he had already made so many modifications to his movements when he truly thought about it. He already made noise when approaching her, that hadn’t really changed except maybe the volume of it. A bit more exaggerated just to be safe. He’d made noise opening things, using the phone, all kinds of noise really. Humans were seemingly incapable of true silence in all movements. So he had adapted, without noticing he was doing it until he’d consciously thought of it. Before coming to Earth, before knowing her, he had been utterly silent. It provided that otherworldly edge he had become famous for, a creature of the dark, extinguishing sound itself. Even when his rule of hell had solidified and Mazikeen took care of any demon who thought otherwise, he’d never made noise. Hell could be an incredibly quiet place, knowing how to sneak around was of the essence, another quality his siblings would never understand. And why would they when they had announcements of any kind accompanied by loud shouting of ‘be not afraid’ and trumpet like instruments? Lucifer it seemed had truly been made for the shadows.

But times like this, cases like this, it made the shadows not seem so bad. Another one of his parental figure’s ironies, he was the light bringer and yet with the exception of that one ability his entire skillset was optimized for working from the shadows.

Maybe they were where he actually belonged.

Amenadiel liked to claim he had no sense of responsibility. No thought for how his actions affected others. Not even with time spent had his older brother’s opinion of him changed. It had changed in other aspects but his perceived selfishness, the idea that Lucifer simply did not think of others besides himself persisted in his brother’s brain. The chiding he had gotten when Amenadiel had stepped in to prevent the Detective from ripping her hands apart to find him in rubble had solidified that. Someone could have gotten hurt, he hadn’t thought it was a trap and rushed in (but honestly, who would have thought a murder victim’s apartment was booby-trapped by a grenade), someone innocent could have gotten hurt. Regardless of the fact Lucifer had no way of knowing there was a literal bomb about to go off in his face. Regardless of the fact he had wings that had taken a large portion of the damage and he would have been moments away from orientating himself to the point he could stop his own bleeding. Regardless of the fact he had had a bomb blown up on him while the one of a kind person that made his form human happened to be in range. No matter what he had done, Amenadiel would have found a way to tie it back to his belief that Lucifer did not think of others.

He idly wondered if while spending time with Linda, his brother may have ever considered the opposite. That Lucifer was painfully aware of what everyone around him thought of him. That his need to have a manicured look and fine suit was to convince people he was in fact not the scarred red thing that stared back at him when he looked in mirrors and not just vanity. That the reason he had agonized over telling the Detective came out of his fear of not just rejection, but of hurting her. Of shattering her world. He’d quickly learned what his inner self did to people he cared about with Linda. Was it really selfish of him to not want to repeat the experience with the Detective, a person who was not paid to deal with his faults. He could hear things others said when they thought he wasn’t listening and even though he shouldn’t he’d been painfully aware of just how much some people hated him and even tried to win some of them over. Even if their opinion of him didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Amenadiel thought Lucifer refused to take ownership of anything when privately it had been the opposite.

He’d felt compelled to come back and help the Detective rescue her child because Malcom Graham had been his brother’s response to Lucifer. He’d agonized over whether keeping Mum on earth was the right choice and even more so when Uriel became involved. He’d spent countless times pondering what-ifs and sought countless distractions from the fact that by sending his mother away it meant his siblings and father lost someone else they cared about at his hands. He’d felt a burning sense of shame at the fact Charlotte, a human he considered his friend, had lost so much by his mother inhabiting her body, something that had also been Lucifer’s fault. He’d felt endless amounts of guilt that he was the very thing that had brought Cain into Los Angeles, into all of their lives, even before the man’s true intentions had been realized. He felt guilt and rage that he was the thing that had destroyed Cecilia, a girl who had trusted him to help her to an abuse-free life. He felt rage and guilt ever time the Detective looked at him and the realization showed on her face that she saw him for exactly what he was. The new ever present tiredness in the way she asked him questions. He was responsible for that. For ruining her world.

Amenadiel did not need to lecture him. His inner thoughts did a well enough job.

But if there was one thing he was not going to be guilty about, it would be that his right hand demon got killed by a human. Even if that human was cursed by his father and had more than enough time to practice to the same demon’s skill level. Mazikeen may have broken that bond of trust between them but he was not about to break it on his end. One of the things they had promised each other in the beginning stages of friendship was that they would be there for each other no matter what. No matter what bind or cage, one would break the other out of it or they would die trying. And even if Mazikeen had felt like that bond was over, he didn’t. He had given her his word, and she needed him to follow through. That was all there was to it.

Emotions made things so complicated. Being encouraged to explore why Maze’s betrayal had hurt and poking and prodding the emotional wound may be the key to better self-worth and actualization or whatever Linda had called it, but it made things hard. He felt angry he had to go rescue her, resentment at her for starting that entire situation, rage. When before it would have just been, Mazikeen needed assistance and he provided it. Things were easy. Hell didn’t have room for self-growth, emotions outside of anger had no place there.

But he wasn’t in hell. And feelings or not, Mazikeen needed assistance.

So he had flown. Tidying up the room, grabbing a pair of scrubs from a closet to replace that awful bed sheet of a robe and off he had gone. He’d hoped the Detective understood the urgency and his pain of a brother bothered to stick around to see the results of his meddling. Once the penthouse was locked down, it was only accessible via window or roof. So it wasn’t exactly the most angel proof place in LA but it was human and demon proof which had been what he had in mind when choosing the place. Only visitors he would have had to worry about had feathers, and they tended to yell their arrival giving critical moments to prepare.

The location that Maze was at was not familiar to him, yet he had very little trouble finding it. It called upon abilities he had not used in years, looking for distinguishing signatures. Maze, being of hell, stood out on the Earthly plane. His brother, being of heaven, also stood out on the Earthly plane. Any Celestial being did, a beacon of light calling to him. He could feel himself glow a little in the sky, the ability calling on his lighter side to emerge. Literally. It had been handy using to ferret out demons who thought they could hide from him Earth side and provided excellent sight in the dark. The major downside of it was unless otherwise channeled into something more appropriate, he glowed. 

Not that any of Los Angeles rush hour cared about a being moving on a different plane of existence above them. Even if they had been looking for him, they wouldn’t find him, wouldn’t see him travelling. After all, it would not do to give Amenadiel any more ammunition in his “Lucifer only thinks of himself” rantings.

But his personal glowing didn’t matter now as he descended down into the section of Los Angeles were Mazikeen glowed. The property he landed on had seen better days, similar to the crime scene from, was it really only this afternoon? Ironically enough it was a dilapidated old church, Our Lady of multiple graffiti signs. What had once been a small humble church now stood abandoned and alone, in a sad testament to the state of the surrounding neighborhood. The location was in an undesirable part of town, where even in a city of Los Angeles’s size there was available land for cheap. The problem wasn’t the lack of land, it was in the area surrounding it. It would do no good to knock the old white structure down and build something on top of it because the costs to undertake such a project would overwhelm the benefits. So the former house of God sat abandoned, used only by transients, teenagers avoiding their parents and people with something to hide from the open.

Of course, twisted humor. Because it wasn’t enough that he’d been on his feet all day, wasn’t enough an innocent girl had lost her life and wasn’t enough that a building had exploded and would leave several people without their worldly possessions and a place to sleep. No, it had to be in a God-forsaken church of all places to stick her. His demon was being held hostage in a church. A catholic church too, because they hadn’t done enough to deserve his ire lately. Fan-fucking-tastic.

He at least stopped, slowed down and then did a quick scout of the building. No obvious trip-wires, bobby traps or other sensing devices but Lucifer had recently learned from the Sinnerman aftermath such devices could be incredibly small. Caution would be well heeded here, as it would be from any point forward now. The last thing he needed was to kill Maze on her own rescue mission.

He went in slowly, appearing human but on high alert. There wasn’t much left inside the church to hide behind or conceal positions like there had been in Cain’s previous choice of venue for a showdown. No second levels, no pillars to hide behind. The church consisted of two areas, a main foyer and the inner sanctuary. The foyer had been stripped over everything but the floor long ago, the walls that remained were used to practice painting with spray paint. Undoubtedly a spot for teens to hang out, as there were multiple iterations of statements like “Jessica and Peter forever!” only to later be crossed out with layers on top that stated girls suck, random statements about their peers regarding certain anatomy and the ever present “Fuck the police” and anarchy symbol. Inside the inner auditorium pews had either rotted or been stolen, creating mazes in and of themselves off the main aisles. The gentle slope down to the front had been littered with numerous items like probable drug needles, trash and broken pieces of wood and other odd Knick knacks like a jacket, empty bottles of alcohol not even he would drink if desperate and fine layers of dust. The sloped ceiling had a few holes opening up to the Los Angeles sky, the setting sun casting colors in the clouds visible and the wood below them rotting with exposure to the elements.

Mazikeen was, as the caller on the other end of the line had indicated, bound and gagged at the altar. The caller had not sounded like Cain, the voice on the other end of the line robotic in nature but it was undoubtedly from her cellphone. As far as Lucifer was concerned, Cain was attempting to pick off his demon as revenge for Lucifer picking off his organization. A warning as to what would happen if heads of the Sinnerman organization didn’t stop losing their heads and showing up at three-letter government agency offices wanting to confess their sins and pay penance on Earth for their crimes. Besides, only a man like Cain could have stood a chance going up against Maze even in the best of circumstances. His demon would not have gone quietly.

She looked like she was sleeping, if it wasn’t for the slight noise the gag made when she breathed in Lucifer would have feared her dead. As though the irritation in kidnapping his demon had not been enough, one of the multiple pieces of furniture she was tied to happened to be an organ. Not quite a piano but similar enough message ‘Fuck you Lucifer.’

“Hey Maze.” Lucifer tried, gently shaking the demon then pulling back. He’d learned long age not to wake up a demon from a deep sleep up close. He’d nearly lost a hand from her reflexively swiping at him until that lesson had stuck. But she was tied up and well, sometimes things just had to be done. She didn’t look as bad as he had feared, a head wound was something to worry about but the rest of her appeared to be superficial wounds or rope burns. That or she had already started healing and had been here a while. The loss of his phone may have had something to do with that. Still, she seemed rather alright compared to what he had braced himself for. Which was one of the two good things of today. The other being the Detective had asked him questions.

Maze’s phone sat at the center of the pulpit, the screen dark. Gently holding the device by the edges so as to not lose any fingerprints, Lucifer picked it up and opened the phone. Maze’s passcode had been easy to guess, if only a little cute. The small human’s birthday, similar to Detective Dan’s. Honestly, he didn’t understand why Maze wanted to go back to hell when her feelings for the little human had grown so much. No incoming calls, no messages to anyone new. It was broadcasting location, no doubt the government agents he had blown off at the hospital attempting to find Maze before he did. Not that the phone would give them any clues about where she had been taken or any places she had been in between, the phone had all content erased except for the last exchange with Chloe’s phone.

That bastard. Another dead end.

Deciding to leave the phone and its irritating lack of clues for a moment, Lucifer bent back down and gently worked out Maze’s restraints, the knots becoming undone in his fingers, as they should. No knots could hold him, nor could any survive in his hands. Rather handy when getting kidnapped, or devil-napped, whichever term fit best but annoying when trying to tie someone up. He could feel her heartbeat under his fingers, strong and steady going. The head wound was a bit worrying, with it being so close to her temple but that was for a doctor to determine or someone with aid training. It had bled a great deal, leaving blood all down the side of her face and onto her top, but it wasn’t very deep. Lucifer didn’t know what that meant, all wounds in hell had either been fatal or something he healed right away.

“Hey Maze, it’s me. Lucifer.” He tried coaxing her awake, both in English and in her native tongue, and got no response. Lucifer sighed. Maze was always one for dramatics, Lucifer mused as he picked her up. Maybe that was why they had gotten along so well, they both had an attitude. “Alright Maze, I’m carrying you back, just like when we broke into Moloch's compound way back when I first met you. Remember that? It was a total disaster, you almost died” The memory came up as Lucifer leveraged the petite demon in his arms, she was so light for such a creature that held such an intense amount of fury. He shifted her back and forth, trying to find a position that would work best. If she had been awake she would have protested being carried like a doll or damsel in distress.

The problem, Lucifer pondered as he walked out of the church, swiping her phone on the way out after a few attempts and almost dropping Mazikeen, was not that he could not carry her. He could carry her without any issue. No the problem would be if she woke up mid-flight and freaked out on him. Lucifer did not feel as though he would hurt her by dropping her, he could catch her just as quickly, but being stabbed with a knife unexpectedly did not sound appealing on a good day, let alone while holding a squirming demon in flight. One of her knives was fastened in her belt, as it always was but its twin was missing. Lucifer had no clue where the other was, probably carted off by Cain as some kind of stupid trophy. It was a testament to how out Maze was that she didn’t even notice him messing with the clasp. It had been another early lesson to not stand between a demon and their knives.

Mazikeen’s knives were special. Initially a gift given to mock, after all it was hard to deal large damaging blows with small knives, it had turned into a testament of her skill as a fighter. Knife fighters had to get up close and personal to deal damage, and the fact Maze had kept them even as her personal power and fighting abilities grew was a symbol of her own beginnings. A trophy to all she had overcome on her own, not because she was larger or more powerful than her opponents, but because she was the better fighter. The loss would come as a blow, not to her person but to her ego and image of self. He gently unhooked it and tucked it in a pocket, thinking it would be best to take weapons away from her immediate reach.

He spent a few brief moments in the long shadows, the sun even lower in the sky, Lucifer bothering to check and ensure there were no people about. Not because of the flying, though it would be much to Amenadiel’s disappointment. No it was to ensure there were no other humans around to spot him carting around what appeared to be a drugged petite helpless woman he had probably just kidnapped. Well looks were deceiving, but Lucifer had dealt with enough law enforcement to know humans just didn’t like the honest answers he gave them and he refused to lie. So taking off in stealth it was.

Flying and holding Maze reminded him of his initial arrival on Los Angeles. The air had felt just as wonderful under his wings then, free of ash and soot and were allowed to gleam as they were meant to, twinkling with the stars he had created so long ago. He’d claimed he’d sobbed of pain when cutting them off but in reality it had hurt deeply on a personal level to have the feeling of flight and the knowledge he was never going to experience it again taken. He knew on some level why cutting them off had been needed, but having the taste of flight fresh in his mouth while they had been brutally hacked off, that had been its own kind of torture.

But here among the stars, high in the clouds, Lucifer felt better then it had in days. Up here he could just be, molding himself with the sky. There was no space for negative thoughts or feelings, or any kind of pain. It was just him, the gentle flaps of his wings and the air, only his will to stay in the sky keeping him there. It was one of the few moments when he felt at one with creation, letting a small streak of light emerge to shoot across the Earth’s sky as he moved in the parallel plane. The few moments he let himself be what he was created for felt like a rush to his head, the best high he’d ever had. It burned in agony when it left, the feeling of punishing emptiness. It would be so easy to stay a streak of light forever, drawing shapes and things in the sky. But it was just another piece of his home he had lost, the feeling of flying was trying to replace the feeling of belonging. The feeling of being an almighty angel. It was a beautiful feeling, but it came with some many strings, too many for him. He was chasing the high of who he would never be, the longing to belong to something he didn’t have, of love, acceptance and grace he’d never received but flying let him forget that uncomfortable fact for a few moments.

Maze of course picked the moment he set foot on his balcony to stir, whatever was in her system having burned through. He gently hushed her as to not scare the people inside the penthouse, setting her down to have a free hand to open the locks under his hand.

That had been a mistake. The kick he had seen coming but not quickly enough to dodge. Her foot made contact with his shin, not breaking the bone underneath but sending pain up his body. “Damn it Mazikeen, can’t even be a proper rescued hostage can you?” there was no venom behind the question and though his leg hurt to place weight on, he wasn’t angry. The anger could come later, he was just glad she was fighting. Her being still was uncanny.

“Where am I?” came the mumbled reply, her brown eyes blinking to clear the dried blood from her eyelids. Her hands came up to gingerly cradle her head, then shooting to her side looking for her weapon, having noticed the weight of them gone.

He tossed the knife he had taken back to her without a word, unclicking the final piece of the lock. He extended a hand to her, a hand she ignored, pulling herself onto her own two feet without him. She did not look steady, leaning heavily against the glass to support herself. He gently opened the door, quietly as to not startle the occupants inside.

Amenadiel was up and on the other side of the door before Lucifer had fully opened it, muttering about front doors being called front doors for a reason. Lucifer didn’t have it in him to listen to anymore lecturing. He felt a deep tiredness and the only thing that sounded appealing was taking a hot shower and crawling into bed to sleep for a day. He was not just physically exhausted but mentally as well, his brain trying to keep up with all the new information that had been thrown at it all afternoon.

“Chloe is with Trixie in the other room, she's on the phone with investigators” The older angel explained quietly, keeping the volume down. Lucifer just nodded and Maze had the decency to flinch at the young human’s name. She went to the end of the bar and pulled out a black towel, not wanting to stain any white ones with blood. How courteous.

“Right. So I take it you’ve been at home living it up?” Amenadiel had the audacity to look confused at Lucifer’s question. “You know, Dad stopping Mum from leaving and the two of them becoming a great big happy family again.” _Without me._ The words hadn’t been said at the end but he didn’t need to. The bitter tone and general standoffishness had said enough for him.

“Mom’s back?” Amenadiel seemed legitimately surprised and confused. Lucifer rolled his eyes. Honestly, it was upsetting sometimes. He gets his wings back, hightails his feathered ass home and didn’t even bother to come back to check on them until it was to lecture him for being in harm’s way. It wasn’t like Amenadiel had wanted to come back to Earth anyway, he just did so after hearing Chloe’s internal panic at him getting a bomb blown up. Even then it wasn’t to help with Cain or clean up the mess that had been made by Charlotte trying to save his life. It was to boss him around.

Amenadiel did not care about what was going on down on Earth nor the people on it. He ran back home the moment he got the chance and hadn’t looked back. He’d left Lucifer, again.

Lucifer crossed over to the piano, pulling the Celestial sword out of its hiding place, the silver metal giving off a soft glow, making the room seem dimmer. The sword swallowed surrounding light and used it to give off a cool shimmer, the soft light blending perfectly with his status as a light bringer. It still gave him a small rush when he touched it, Lucifer not really realizing how much he had missed it until he held it in his hands again, the familiar fit sending warm memories back through his brain. “She showed up and dropped this off. We had a nice chat, she says hi. Sorry she didn’t tell you in person, she told me to, but you weren’t around.” Lucifer threw it back down into it’s celestial pocket, all eyes in the room following it vanishing. Maze visibly relaxed when the metal was out of sight, Amenadiel just seemed awed.

“You could have called.” Amenadiel sounded hurt, which made a small, ugly part of Lucifer happy. It hurt being excluded, it hurt being the odd person out for millennia, and if his brother had to feel like the odd one out for a bit, well it was only fair really. Actually, fair would have been sticking him down on Earth or in hell for thousands and millions of years. Two weeks was but a blink. “I didn’t know he kept it.” The older angel confessed and it hurt a bit too. That Amenadiel had thought his things were destroyed too, that he had been marked as irredeemable.

“Well I didn’t know he was feeling so magnanimous towards our mother either but here we are.” Lucifer drawled. “Besides, wouldn’t want to spoil your homecoming.”

“Lucifer mom being back is much more important than that and you know it.” Lecturing again. As always.

“Awfully convenient.” Maze spoke for the first time, quiet, preferring to hide in the shadows by the bar. “One of her least favorite humans out on the loose again and she just happens to show up with an order for his head.” Her tone was biting, sarcastic.

“Did you have anything else you wanted to add Mazikeen?” Lucifer was tired and prone to snapping when tired. He knew better than to bait her into fighting with him but at the moment he almost couldn’t help it. He wanted the fight, wanted her to push at him. So he could yell at her like a part of him wanted to and not feel guilty when she looked sad like she had when he hadn’t jumped at accepting her apology. “Seeing as you want to get that same human.”

“Nope.” With a popped p, another habit she had picked up from the tiny human. Bottles clanked together as his demon sorted through his liquor shelf looking for something she had stuck at the back. “Besides, last thing I remember was leaving a coffee shop downtown. Looking for a new bounty.” The cap unscrewed the demon didn’t even bother with the pretense of using a cup and gulped it down. She only spared a breath for an afterthought “must have been more dangerous than they thought.”

“No Mazikeen.” Honestly, none of them got it and it was so frustrating to always have to be the one explaining. Why couldn’t they just all be on the same page for once? “Cain went after you because I’ve been picking off members of his organization.”

“Well he must have used someone new.” Maze snapped. “I was in a nauseatingly decorated trend café downtown and then I was waking up on your balcony. The only people I saw were hot chicks taking photos and pervs who thought picking up hot chicks at a coffee shop was a good idea. All humans with normal expiration dates.” She swallowed down more booze. “Where’s my other knife.” It wasn’t a question.

“Your secret admirer stole it.” Lucifer snapped, pulling her phone out of his pocket and throwing on the bar in her direction. The small device skittered, coming to a stop in front of its owner. “Your phone called the Detective’s and insisted I come get you. It was all the usual criminal mastermind stuff. I had to come by myself. I couldn’t bring police.”

“Why the fuck would Cain try to face you on his own?” Maze questioned and it made him stop. None of that made sense. He’d been so desperate to find Maze after being blown up he hadn’t given the idea a second thought. Cain was many things but dumb was not one of them. Why indeed had he thought it would be a good idea to face a very pissed off archangel? Surely that made no sense. But if it hadn’t been Cain who ordered the demon brought there, who had? Who else would have cared enough?

“Can we go back to mom being back?” Amenadiel asked and got a resounding no from both parties.

“I don’t know. Maybe because he thinks its as easy to do as take down a demon.” A bottle came barreling at his head and shattered along the wall behind him. Lucifer sighed, running a tired hand through his already messed up hair and forced himself to stay focused. Maze stood at the other end of the bar, ready to fight. Amenadiel had cautiously taken residence at the center of the bar between them, as though by standing there his mere presence could bring peace between the two of them. “Look, someone who had demon-napped you called the Detective’s phone demanding to speak to me, and said they had taken you hostage and if I wanted you back alive to come alone. Cain is the only human who fits that bill.”

Her shoulders slumped then. “So you wanted me back alive.” Lucifer exaggerated the rolling of his eyes to get a reaction out of his favorite demon, who picked up another bottle to throw at him, Amenadiel turning from concerned to confused at the pair.

“Of course I wanted you back alive Mazikeen. I brought you with me for a reason.”

Mazikeen was spared from responding to what was a mushy moment for the two of them by the Detective and her offspring’s arrival. Maze perked up considerably at the small human, who looked just as equally happy to see her, but held back behind her mother. Maze set her knife down, placing it next to the bottle. Lucifer considered she was probably coming face to face with the two of them for the first time since she had left the apartment, neither knowing quite what to say and settling on staring at one another. It brought Lucifer a small amount of comfort that things were just as awkward for Maze as they had been for him.

“Maze what happened to your head?” The detective fussed, going over to examine it after a few moments of hesitation, ignoring any bad blood that had happened between them. Maze seemed as surprised as Lucifer was the Detective’s reaction, protesting she had just a little scrape and would be returning to the café in the morning to find out what happened to her. The Detective in turn worried over her head wound, picking up the towel to dab at her forehead, declaring it a shallow scrape, probably from hitting something.

It seemed Chloe Decker was indeed a miracle, and it brought up a warmth Lucifer wasn’t familiar with very often in his gut to see the two of them getting semi-along again. It would be a long road for all of them, that much was certain but for the first time today, it felt like things were going to be okay. They still had a lot to do, find Cain and punish him, punish the lackey who had planted the bomb, punish the lackey who had kidnapped Mazikeen and continue to prove to the Detective they were worth keeping in her life. But for the first time today, all of that felt possible. There were lots of things to get in the way of course and bringing in Linda for some of it probably would be helpful, the doctor a better mediator than Amenadiel was. But the big picture, the part Lucifer held on to, showed things were not as hopeless as he had thought them to be this morning.

“I’ll go with you.” Lucifer declared, voicing his support for figuring out the truth and the detective nodded, looking concerned but still not likely to flee in terror. Amenadiel added in his own offer of assistance, having finally decided to help them again after all, and the irritation Lucifer had for him dimmed slightly. For the first time in two weeks, it felt a little normal again. They were back to his penthouse, discussing how to take down a threat and making plans to do so.

The detective finally left Maze alone and turned to looking Lucifer over, though why she bothered he wasn’t sure. Lucifer was fine with the exception of currently awful clothing. Scrubs were honestly not flattering, he privately thought, missing the fabric of his suits. The butterfly bandage on his head was now just for show as he was healed from the earlier day’s events. The rest of him probably looked awful, hair all over the place from the air and the complete exhaustion that was surely evident on his face. For her part the Detective looked much better, if about to fall asleep on her feet. She’d changed clothes, and her hair was pulled back into a neat pony tail, the bandages on her hands seemed smaller, less bulky then they had been.

“Never do that to me again.” She instructed; the lecturing tone reduced in severity by what looked like a smile tugging on her face. She stood a few feet away from him, again stopping just outside his personal bubble. Lucifer stepped towards her to fill in the space and let out an involuntarily breath of relief when she didn’t step backwards away from him. In the corner of his eye he could see Maze bending down to talk to the small human, who was in her school clothes and surveying the room. Amenadiel fit in comfortably around the edges, having relocated himself to the piano, carefully studying the shield that sat next to the player’s bench.

“I think I can work with that.” Came his sheepish response, still unsure on what exact footing he stood with her. He felt very shy all of a sudden, “Even though Mazikeen’s kidnapping seems to be the last activity to deal with today, you and your spawn are welcome to stay here if you like. At least for dinner, least I can do for disrupting the end of your day.” The end was added on in a rush, not wanting her to think he was being too forward or trying to rush her into accepting him. Time had been the thing Linda had stressed the most, that and taking things at her pace.

The Detective surprised him. “I think staying here for the night would be best. At least to give the people looking over my apartment for any bugs some space” Lucifer felt himself light up, the weariness from his day melting away with the thought of her being a guest. So what if her reasoning was to see if her stupid ex-fiancé had placed anything to keep tabs on her and the child, she was staying and that was all that mattered. Progress was Progress. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again. I hope you enjoy this chapter and thank you all very much for reading! This has started getting much bigger than I originally thought but I see that as a good thing.


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a Detective, Devil, Demon and Angel go to a bookstore.

The morning had come faster than Chloe Decker had thought it would. The night before had been filled with the non-subtle acts of the occupants of the penthouse avoiding each other while simultaneously pretending they were in fact not avoiding each other at all. It was another display in just how dysfunctional the entire group of them were. Chloe wondered if they knew she could see it and simply did not care to hide their dysfunction from her anymore or if they actually thought they had fooled her with their charade. After all, it would not be hard, they had successfully kept much larger shenanigans from her before. Whatever Linda Martin was being paid it was not enough.

Despite Lucifer’s insistence he clearly did not feel one hundred percent at ease with Maze, keeping her out of the loop of plans for the day. Maze had found out from Chloe what time to meet at the coffee shop to retrace Maze’s last steps, not Lucifer. Amenadiel had also found out from Chloe, though that surprised Chloe less. Lucifer and his brother seemed to have an uneasy truce at the best of times, and they were currently far from the best of times. Her and Lucifer weren’t technically even supposed to be working, having once again been put on administrative leave while the Feds sorted out an actual bomb. The bomb had matched the signature of a previous bombing incident and therefore it had become even more secretive now that the Sinnerman case was not just tied to all kinds of crime syndication but actual terrorism. Cain hadn’t been the first sinner but it seemed he had made it a mission to try out every sin there was to try. Or maybe he was simply going for every Federal felony the United States had to offer.

Amenadiel had wanted to come along to work with them, which Lucifer had also insisted was fine yet he spoke to Maze in whatever her native language was in front of Amenadiel and they had passed occasional jokes all the previous evening while Chloe had been focused on helping Trixie do her homework. Amenadiel had finally left after a curt good bye, one neither demon or devil acknowledged. Lucifer was icing out his older brother too, some past grievance he wasn’t getting over any time soon.

Chloe had asked him if he was okay, if there was anything he wanted to talk about and got his stereotypical Lucifer response. ‘Just fine darling,’ with a head tilt as though the idea of not being fine was astronomically strange to him. Chloe knew pushing with Lucifer was never the answer, the harder people pushed him the more he dug in his heels. He’d out stubbornned God for goodness sake but it still felt like she wasn’t getting the entire story and that he was holding back. Chloe couldn’t understand why but it still hurt to feel him keeping her at arm’s length. It was some kind of weird protective mechanism; Chloe knew enough to know his distance wasn’t her own fault, but that didn’t mean it hurt less.

Right. She had dropped her questioning then, preferring to coordinate with the FBI the search of her and her family’s electronics. Lucifer’s was unfortunately out of the question, the cell phone no longer working. Not that it bothered him, if anything his biggest complaint was the fear of potentially losing all his progress on some ridiculous phone game. His reaction to life or death situations had baffled the Federal Agents and Chloe thought she had successfully been able to play it off as shock. He’d acted like getting a bomb blown up in his face and his right-hand demon kidnapped was, if not totally normal, then definitely something he had dealt with before. Maybe he had.

They had made a vague plan to investigate Maze’s kidnapping, the FBI being much busier in tracking the Sinnerman’s movements and Maze’s kidnapping no longer fitting his MO. The kidnapping did it in terms of messing with them, but Maze had an excellent point. Why would Cain ever try to get Lucifer out of Chloe’s range? It didn’t make any sense and they had felt like they were back at square one. Amenadiel had offered their mother as a candidate, the woman had apparently hated Mazikeen. Chloe had asked why then came to regret her decision almost instantly when Maze went into detail about the various ways she had tried to break the woman in hell. The statement had temporarily cooled the animosity between Amenadiel and Maze but rebuilt the wall between Amenadiel and Lucifer.

Chloe was not looking forward to meeting them at the coffee shop if she was being totally honest. Even though she was now a bonafide member of the secret club of knowing what was really going on around them, she still had a lot to learn. And though Lucifer had promised answers to any question she could think of, it still didn’t feel right to ask some of them, none of the questions that mattered anyway. Questions about his family, his mom, how things fit together. He’d told her she was a miracle and he hadn’t been quite sure what that had meant and reacted poorly to the news, but that still didn’t mean Chloe was done with the subject. Had everything that happened in her life just a part of getting her in place to meet Lucifer? Or maybe it was some shade of gray in between, so far away from the black and white answers Lucifer preferred to operate in. How did blessing a baby work anyway, was she still her father’s daughter? Was that how Jesus had worked?

It had been an action filled two weeks and Chloe was not even closer to feeling in control of the situation than she had been when she’d stumbled down the stairs looking for Lucifer and gotten an eyeful. Would that just be her new normal? Chloe had long ago made peace with the fact there was no higher order to things, no entity out there that pulled strings of Fate. It had been a perk of being an atheist. Now that comfort was gone, the knowledge that she alone could create her own destiny gone with it. Was this what Lucifer had felt his entire existence, feeling unable to escape from the shadow of his father? Chloe had always interpreted his statements in that of a trauma survivor’s, that Lucifer felt the shadow of his past haunting his future, not that his father sat somewhere on high watching what was going on and making slight adjustments as things unfolded. It felt different thinking that somewhere out there, Lucifer’s dad was watching them, critiquing the choices his children made.

Lucifer had insisted in riding with her to bring Trixie to school, claiming he wanted to spend time with the girl, but Chloe knew it was to avoid dealing with Maze and his brother. Trixie had enthusiastically agreed before Chloe could say anything and Chloe did not miss the look of disappointment on Maze’s face. The demon had given Trixie space as requested by none other than Trixie herself, and Chloe felt oddly proud at watching the demon woman give her daughter a real apology. Trixie had asked Maze to take her to a movie later than week, which had perked the demon up considerably. Chloe mentally reminded herself to give both Lucifer and Maze a lecture about how her daughter spending time with them was not going to be used as part of their pissing match with one another. God only knew what the pair would come up with and the lengths they would go to out-do the other. She did not look forward to that fall out, especially seeing as she and Dan had worked so hard to remain civil during their divorce and not be those parents who tried to out-do the other.

Lucifer had chatted with Trixie the entire ride, Trixie happily going on about the water cycle and Lucifer offering appropriate commentary. Trixie had asked a couple questions about putting it together and Chloe had moved to automatically correct her, thinking it a bit much to spring on her daughter. Trixie had rolled her eyes at her mother, explaining that she only asked because Lucifer was an actual angel and it made sense he would know. Lucifer had only then jumped in, leaving Chloe to wonder about when her daughter had learned the truth and to ponder how Trixie was taking it much better than Chloe had. Kids were resilient sure but not having a problem with any of it? No existential crisis? Her daughter had no problems with an actual demon and Chloe kept waiting for someone to jump out and yell ‘Gotcha’ and that she would be on some reality tv show that would run for a season then get canned.

The pair had walked Trixie in the door of her bricked school building, Chloe wanting to tell the front office to be extra alert if someone tried to pick up Trixie. The school had plenty of security, it required being buzzed into the front office, was fenced in and cameras focused on every egress and the kids could not just walk off but Chloe had learned the hard way it never hurt to make sure. Especially considering the school in the past had handed her kid off to anyone wearing a uniform. Cain had never paid Trixie much mind, even less than Lucifer had when she first met him, but Chloe felt it needed due to the events of yesterday. The bandages still on her hands itched, a constant reminder of how lucky they had been. Lucky or things had unfolded a precisely specific way as to not kill them. Regardless of divine intervention, Chloe wanted assurances from the front desk no one would walk off with her kid that wasn’t expressly supposed to.

Of Course, the morning could not be easy and Trixie had forgotten her backpack in the car. Chloe had run off to retrieve it, not wanting to be late to the meeting. She had left Lucifer and Trixie waiting for the principal, the woman had been in a meeting with another teacher when Chloe had arrived and asked to see her. Lucifer had just as quickly offered to go fetch the backpack himself, but Chloe had thought it best to get the item herself. Fewer distractions and it would be much faster. She had told Trixie she was in charge of making sure Lucifer did not wander, something he pretended to be indignant by and made Trixie giggle. Trixie had reassured her mother she would not let Lucifer get into trouble and the front office aide had made a comment about how adorable the pair were.

Chloe had been totally lost in her own thoughts, reaching her car and pulling the brightly colored backpack without paying a huge amount of attention to her surroundings. The lot was full of its usual buzz, school children playing in the distance before class started, parents shrieking about homework, forgotten lunches and reminders of later school activities. Chloe locked her car and had started to return inside before noticing something around her was off. It was a nagging feeling one Chloe had previously named instinct but now felt paranoid was the universe telling her to pay attention. Was that how God communicated with people, that was what Ella made it seem like.

He stood across the street from the drop off lane, the Priest’s garb hard to miss. He stood out and did not fit into their current surroundings, an aberration in the natural order of things. Father Kinley clearly did not care she had spotted him either, giving her a little wave. Chloe bristled at the obvious fucking audacity. Chloe had been irritated he had shown up at her work but blew it off with everything else that had happened. She had thought she had been more than clear, ‘not interested’ but yet here the man was. Her job was one thing, Chloe was used to members of the public thinking they had the right to her time due to taxes before, but her child’s school was an entire other. It crossed the line.

Chloe felt the rage building the closer she got to the man, his stupid smile setting her off even more. How dare he stand leaning against his stupid rental sedan looking like someone in the community people were supposed to trust. How dare he. How fucking dare he smile at her like that, like he was a friend of hers just showing up to say hello. How fucking dare he try to act like it was a completely casual encounter.

“Hello Detective.” He greeted her and the title did not feel right coming from him. Despite it being her official job title and something plenty of people called her, somewhere along the way she had determined it to be her name when Lucifer used it. She had told Lucifer many times she had a name, Lucifer had either pretended he didn’t hear her or said that he preferred calling her Detective until she had given up and stopped telling him. It had turned into a form of endearment coming from him and made the times he used her real name so much more special. It was now when someone else mimicked him, that it made Chloe realize how much she enjoyed hearing Lucifer say it. It felt wrong, and made her feel icky inside the same way older men calling her ‘dear’ or ‘honey’ or even ‘sweetie’ did.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He didn’t respond to her bristling, simply shrugging his shoulders. “I will have you trespassed and get a restraining order. Just ask any of the paparazzi creeps if you think I won’t.”

“I’m here to save you Detective.” Her fingernails pushed into the bandages on the palms of her hands at his use of her title again, something he didn’t notice. “I’m here to help you, God put me in your path.”

It made Chloe laugh. If only this man knew. Chloe felt like a fool for even thinking that this man had been sent to help her or as a test. She could see the irritation in his face before he managed to push it down. “Child, I know it’s a lot but you must believe me. Our father works in mysterious ways and-“

“Okay that is enough.” Chloe cut him off before he could go on whatever speech he had prepared for her. “I don’t know what to tell you or your Vatican friends but you need to stop harassing me and stop harassing my consultant before this” She gestured with her hands at the gap between them “becomes a police matter.”

He was clearly frustrated with her, the man taking in a few deep breaths before speaking. “Chloe Decker, please you must hear me out. I know it seems scary to you but it is a matter of great importance.” Chloe could see from the look on his face he actually believed it. Actually believed in his own story. Chloe didn’t know where along the way she had gotten as angry with the church as she had, as angry with humanity insisting Lucifer was evil. Chloe was still scared of him, terrified even but she still felt anger at his situation. How awful it was to be the one person out because of a choice you had made many years ago as a kid. Falling from divine grace wasn’t quite the same as doing a nude scene but she could sympathize with it. It had followed her around for years, and had inspired people to make all kinds of judgments and assumptions about her without even knowing her. Her story wasn’t as grand on the cosmic scale as Lucifer’s, but that didn’t matter to Chloe. She emphasized with the devil, understood him and some of the rationale behind his choices. He hated the church like she hated paparazzi.

Chloe sighed. She would have to take a new tactic. “Have you seen his face?” she asked the Priest, who seemed confused by her sudden change of heart but not about to question it.

The man shook his head. “No but I know he has one, we’ve tried to get a picture but he’s camera shy. We know its him though because we have a huge amount of photographic evidence.” He went to open the passenger side door which was, as Chloe really took a look now, filled with files. He was worse than Lucifer’s biggest fan. Chloe’s hand stopped him from opening the door, the white of the bandages standing in sharp contrast to the dark paint of the car.

“Father, you will if you don’t leave him alone.” Chloe let the venom back in her tone and the Priest instantly became angry with her again. She could see now, he wasn’t really there to warn her from Lucifer. He was there to chase something himself, Kinley already had unshakable faith, he was looking for something else instead. Chloe didn’t know what it was, didn’t want to know what would drive a man with unquestioning faith into this kind of frenzy. “Lucifer only punishes the guilty. You don’t want to be one.” Images of Jimmy Barnes and other suspects flashed in front of her again, them promising to give her whatever she needed to close their case, that they would do absolutely anything to get their life right. Chloe remembered Charlotte’s frenzied working to do good in the world, taking on cases no other DA would touch, saying she only wanted to make up for things in her past. To set the world right.

Whatever else he had to say to her Chloe didn’t listen to. “Do not bother me or come near me again.” She warned and then turned on her heel to go back inside the school building just as the bell rang. Surely the principal would be coming back now and she needed to stress again how much her daughter’s safety was important.

Chloe had looked for him again when leaving with Lucifer, something he didn’t fail to pick up on. She muttered fine at him when he asked if everything was okay. She didn’t feel herself relax until she was in the driver’s seat and had yet to see the dark blue sedan anywhere. Lucifer clearly wanted to push but she pulled out of the spot and demanded he tell her where the coffee shop Maze had gone to before he could ask. Chloe didn’t want to talk about how one of the only people in her life that might believe her about what was going on was a crazy stalker who had shown up at her child’s school.

She had stressed to the school officials she had no religious connections and Trixie didn’t either, something that had clearly caught his attention but he had chosen not to press her seeming new-found irritation with the cloth in front of others. More proof that he was walking on eggshells with her, the old-Lucifer would have demanded she tell him right there in front of a group of office workers and educators what was going on. Chloe thought she was over-reacting, but it was Trixie’s safety she was thinking about. There was no such thing as under-reacting to her kid’s well-being. Something the man upstairs clearly ignored.

Lucifer’d tried again once they got on the highway, asking if she was okay once again. Chloe resisted the urge to bite his head off or make a sarcastic remark and answered she would be when things quieted down again. It felt a lot like lying and she knew he didn’t believe her. But well, was Chloe really so wrong to not spill her guts right away. What was she supposed to say even, your Dad’s fan-club won’t leave me alone? She remembered as a kid all the people who had been nice to her in order to get in good with her mom; and remembered hating them for ignoring her the moment her mother’s back was turned. If she was irritated with the Priest, well who knew what Lucifer would do with a man trying to drive him back to hell believing it to be his father’s will? Especially now that hell was apparently no longer his home. Besides, Kinley hadn’t even really done anything worth arresting him or anything that warranted letting Lucifer loose on him. He was a misguided Priest trying to do the right thing the way his faith taught him. Chloe couldn’t even be too angry with him, he was just trying to help, it wasn’t his fault she knew he was doing it wrong. It wasn’t Kinley’s fault the world was so fucked and that the world had gotten it so wrong. He was a symptom of the illness but not the illness itself.

Chloe also knew Lucifer would take it as a personal betrayal if she did not tell him the truth eventually but a small ugly part of Chloe didn’t care. The part of her that was angry Lucifer didn’t force the issue, didn’t tell her the truth in a way she would have believed. The small part of her that felt her partner lied to her. Chloe had long ago made peace with the fact that there would always be parts of Lucifer she didn’t know about or understand, she just hadn’t counted on how much of him those parts were. She felt in some ways he was a total stranger to her, wrapped up in something familiar. Like a small child following around a person in a similar coat at the supermarket only to discover it was in fact not their parent.

In the end she was the one who cracked first. She knew it would be easy to not be the bigger person here, but her entire self couldn’t do it. Things were still raw and hurting from the day before and the days before that. Chloe didn’t want to punish him, even with the knowledge that she could. Chloe knew, seemingly better than Lucifer, that the road of revenge and spite would bring no satisfaction. All she really wanted was her partner, and while she felt hurt and pain at his choices, the part of her that also wanted to punish him also understood why he had done it.

“The Priest from yesterday showed up.” She admitted and she knew the brief flash of red in his eyes wasn’t a trick of the light. “I sent him on his way. You needn’t worry.” Because that was what Chloe did right? Took care of the ‘real-world’ implications when Lucifer did something too out of the ordinary to explain. Sure he helped with the explanations and she had pushed down the naggy feels of doubt when she did it, but it boiled down to the fact Chloe took care of keeping the kinds of things the Priest wanted to show her contained.

“I most certainly will.” Lucifer remarked, grabbing at his suit jacket pocket and cursing under his breath when he didn’t find his usual flask. He must’ve forgotten it, maybe he was more off his game from the explosion than she thought, more messed up then the immaculate presentation would lead her to believe. “He could be dangerous. It hasn’t been that long since his kind thought lighting people on fire was sanctioned for having individuality. I will not let him near you or Beatrice.” It was kind of cute, Chloe mused, if he wasn’t so annoying. Where had all this fierce protection been when Cain was around?

“Lucifer I took care of it. He felt it was his duty to warn me, I got warned. We have bigger problems to worry about.” As if to punctuate her point that the matter was closed, Chloe switched topics. “The coffee shop’s name is Bezzle Brews right?”

“It’s Beelzebean.” Lucifer admitted, reluctantly. He was clearly not done with the subject while Chloe was. She made a mental note to make him give her his word he wouldn’t go scare the daylights out of the Father. The last thing a man like that needed was an affirmation of his cause. He would only see Lucifer showing up to scare him away as a challenge, and as proof Chloe needed help. “It’s a play on the name Beelzebub, who is supposed to be a demon.” Chloe laughed and Lucifer looked disturbed. The universe was just having a great laugh at her expense today wasn’t it? And now she even knew it was designed to be that way. Of course, such a coffee shop would be popular. Of course it would be a place Maze would go. “Are you sure you’re alright?” Lucifer questioned “You know we don’t have to-“

“You are not taking me off this Lucifer.” Chloe snapped, some of the irritation at traffic and Father Kinley showing in her voice. He looked shocked and a little hurt, and Chloe felt instant regret. She hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings and she wasn’t angry with him, just with the rest of the world. He wouldn’t, wasn’t able to understand that though and had taken her jab personally. Chloe couldn’t blame him, Lucifer was used to being the scapegoat for everything and Chloe had discovered he defaulted to it, even in situations it wasn’t warranted. At some point in her partner’s very long life he had taken to just assuming everything was his fault and Chloe had made herself a promise to not let him fall into it with her. It was time to make good on that. She took a deep breath and tried again, softer this time. “I just feel like the universe is messing with me. That’s all.”

He switched from confusion to understanding incredibly quickly, letting out a small oh. “You have no idea Detective,” well that was fair enough. Him using her title seemed to clear her brain of the last time it had been used, by someone who wasn’t him. She couldn’t even remember the way the Father had said it, just the feeling it had invoked when he had. That feeling was gone now, replaced be a sense of peace. Things were going back to normal, whatever normal was. This was just another day, another case. Even if it wasn’t official. The air in the car felt considerably lighter and Lucifer pressed on, filling the no longer uncomfortable silence with facts about where the name Beelzebub had come from.

Maze and Amenadiel had already beat them to the coffee shop, which for Nine AM on a Tuesday was impressively full. Chloe noticed they had arrived in separate ways of transportation, Maze’s bike parked out front and Chloe assumed Amenadiel had flown or driven as there was only one helmet with Mazikeen. What kind of cars did Angels drive anyway, the car from Supernatural? Lucifer’s car made sense, that and there was a time he had cut his wings off. What did Amenadiel drive, surely collector corvette’s were not Angel standard issue.

Lucifer chattered in amusement at the name, delighted with the turn of events, which annoyed Amenadiel who seemed to be regretting his offer of coming along. Chloe took the time to look around while Maze went to the back of the building, looking for any clues. It seemed like a regular trendy place, tons of young people wearing noise cancelling headphones and absorbed in their computers, working on the next great American novel, screen play or report. The barista looked understandably dead inside after working a morning rush with customers who choose to frequent a coffee shop named after a demon. She didn’t even blink at Lucifer’s name or order, only making any facial expressions when Lucifer dropped in a hundred-dollar bill in the tip jar for not making a big deal out of his name. Even then all he got was a small ‘thanks’ which only seemed to make him happier. 

A few minutes later he handed Chloe her coffee, somehow remembering the way she liked to drink it. It was kind of funny, it seemed like she had to remind him thousands of times about some things, things like acceptable dinner foods for Trixie or correct department procedure but some things she had only told him once and he had gotten right every time since that moment. Even when she changed up her order he seemed to know. It was another thing about him that was endearing and forced Chloe to really think about her earlier words to Father Kinley.

She’d been honest when she told him Lucifer only punished the guilty but that was only half the story, somewhere along the way in his time in Los Angeles he had become about helping the innocent too. He was still terrifying but he had helped her in so many ways Chloe had forgotten along the way the monster he claimed to be. The terror of him came from the unknown surrounding him, the sheer power his existence meant and the knowledge his existence brought. Chloe realized with a jolt in the demon themed coffee shop, she wasn’t scared of him but of his world. Demons weren’t a myth, they were real and not all of them were as friendly to humanity as Mazikeen. God really was kind of a dick, and Lucifer’s mother was just as terrifying. All of those things were scary enough on their own, that was before adding in her personal connection.

They had sat down to regroup, being the odd ones out to not be sitting alone at a table. Not that they got any attention from the other patrons, the humans around them were entirely unaware of who they were sharing a coffee with. Chloe had slid in a booth first, Maze immediately picked the opposite side. Lucifer had beaten his brother next to the spot by Chloe and Amenadiel took his spot next to Mazikeen, who was making a face and pressing herself to the wall. How were any of them millions of years old, they acted like preschoolers sometimes.

“Is being here bringing back any memories?” Amenadiel asked and it was a testament to the headphones of other patrons that no heads looked up at Mazikeen’s No. Lucifer shot his brother a pointed look and Chloe decided it was time to take a different approach.

“Sometimes memories come back with other senses.” Chloe explained, getting a look of disbelief for her troubles. Chloe briefly wondered if this was where the term ‘patience of a saint’ came from. “Why don’t you close your eyes and drink some coffee and walk us through your day.”

Maze sighed with exasperation, but Lucifer’s facial expression must have encouraged the Demon to try. So, her eyes closed and her body relaxed, her expression at odds with the sharp spikes on her leather jacket. “Okay, I had a new bounty and he used to work around here. Some office building. His co-workers remembered him coming in with cups from here. I decided to start here.

“The barista was a different one than the one today. Blonde, obnoxiously perky, reminded me of a golden retriever. She told me he hadn’t come in a while and she knew that because he was a big tipper. It was disappointing but it happens. I decided to get a coffee.”

“What kind?” at Chloe’s question Maze’s eyes snapped open.

“Really Decker?” If Maze’s eyebrows went any higher they would reach her hair line. Chloe felt unsure of herself, Amenadiel didn’t look convinced either. But Chloe had to try, it was silly but this felt like a try-out. It was silly of course, Chloe knew on some level she did not need to prove her worthiness of joining the ‘Humans that know’ gang, but it still felt like she did.

“Sometimes small memories can lead to others.” Chloe tried, choosing to not take offense at the looks of incredulity being sent her way from across the white futuristic, somehow not coffee stained, table. “Really sit and think with me about it. What did it taste like, did you notice anyone who looked out of place?”

Maze scoffed but closed her eyes before Lucifer could say anything. “Okay fine. I had a chocolate mocha. They taste good.” So demons enjoyed chocolate mochas. The world consistently got stranger.

Good. They were getting somewhere. “Did you order it for here or to go?”

“To-go.” The Demon answered. “I was going to drink it here but something changed my mind.” Maze’s nose scrunched up at the memory, the expression not one the demon often wore. Mazikeen was always sure of herself, Chloe was so used to confidence and self-assurance from Maze, this sudden confusion bothered her more than it should have. 

“What did Mazikeen?” Amenadiel asked. Maze’s eyes shot open, sending a frustrated look at Amenadiel and then back across the table. Lucifer shrugged, sipping his coffee out of a mug and looking anywhere else but at the table’s fellow occupants. It seemed Lucifer was once again comfortable to let Chloe take the lead.

“You don’t do it right. Only Decker does.” Maze instructed; the angel looked ready to reply anyone could ask questions but Maze shut her eyes before he could. It gave Chloe a little satisfaction, she felt happy to contribute. Score a point for team Humanity. Chloe had wondered if she would be dead weight on their team and was happy to find that she was useful for something. “It wasn’t a person. It was something I saw.”

Okay. That was still not specific. “Was it a car of some kind?” Maze shook her head, pulling the cup up to her lips again and took a big gulp. “What about a logo?” Maze set her mug down and looked thoughtful.

“I think so.” Chloe could feel Lucifer lean in a bit more, now very interested and she wondered if this was how she acted when he was doing his thing. She could see him watching her out of the corner of her eye, his gaze intently focused on her rather than the demon across the table. Chloe pushed the flutter it brought down, unwilling to let it get to her for now.

“Can you tell me anything specific about the logo?”

“It had a funny word on it.” Maze had nearly finished her coffee and swiped Amenadiel’s without the angel noticing, all with her eyes closed. Chloe stifled a laugh and Maze’s mouth turned into a smile as she drank the coffee. “Azazael? As-Ephereal? Something ancient sounding? It didn’t fit”

“Aziraphale’s?” Lucifer asked and Maze’s eyes shot open.

“You know it?” Amenadiel asked curiously and swiped back his coffee. Lucifer rolled his eyes at his brother. He gestured to a nearby patron on their laptop, a paper bag with the words “Aziraphale’s Used books” written in inky blue script, standing out against the cream of the paper. The font looked like it belonged from a Gothic fairy-tale book, not a normal bookstore. The design was clearly custom and meant to attract a very specific type of client. 

Maze suddenly looked unsure of herself and Chloe decided to go with it. “Maybe you saw it yesterday too. Go back to changing your to-go order. What happened afterwards?”

Maze grumbled, as was her way, but ultimately complied. “I had decided to go check out somewhere else for the human. The barista was nice about changing the order, she was super chatty. She told me it was a cool bookstore and I should go.” Maze looked confused and her eyes opened again. “I think I decided to go and kill time before checking out his lunch spot. She said he had religious books. Always worth a laugh.”

Lucifer downed the rest of his coffee in a gulp and jumped to his feet. “To Aziraphale’s then.” Chloe took her last sips of her own drink and reached for her bag, Amenadiel did not look convinced. “What?” Lucifer challenged, and Chloe felt some of the previous evenings tension return to the surface. “You have a better idea?” and Amenadiel sighed and moved to get up. Lucifer seemed pleased with himself and Chloe made herself useful and looked up the bookstore.

They decided to walk there as it was a quarter mile down the road and parking again would be a bitch. Well more like Chloe had decided they would walk there and no one argued with her. The sun felt warm and the day was shaping up to be a nice one. It seemed a bit brighter than yesterday had somehow, maybe it was because there were no dead college students, explosions or internal affairs meetings. Los Angeles could never be accused of being sleepy but this district was calm and yet bustling. The neighborhood had long ago been gentrified, the only reminders of its past in shop names. The names and décor had remained but the original working-class people had been replaced by artistic hipsters with trust funds who believed themselves to be edgy. Niche shops that could only survive in thriving economic areas like this one lined the avenue, all the cars driving down the road were either new model luxury hybrids or older sturdy cars. There was a rare bike line and the young trees that decorated the sidewalks showed the neighborhood had recently been retrofitted.

Aziraphale’s may have been the exception. It did not have the glistening store front the other shops had and unlike the others, it did not devote itself to too niche of an interest. It was, according to the sign on the door, just a used bookstore that specialized in hard to find books. A dying business in the best of places but it made sense to Chloe it had not moved with the other businesses. The bookstore was charming in only the way homegrown businesses could be and the interior reminded her of the library from Beauty and the Beast. Bookshelves reached the ceilings, and it was dim inside, the thick clothed drapes blocking out most of the Los Angeles sun. Despite the darkness, Chloe did not feel apprehensive, if anything it made the store feel more friendly.

“Please put your coffees on the counter, you can take them again when you leave.” The cashier announced bored sounding, looking up from a box he was going through. The man, looking like a friendly grandfather brightened upon seeing them. “Oh hello again, You brought friends this time I see.” He smiled, coming from around the counter to greet them. “Welcome to Aziraphale’s, I specialize in hard to find books, especially the religious ones.”

“Oh sorry, we aren’t looking for any books-” Amenadiel began.

He was cut off by Lucifer. “Don’t pay any attention to my brother. Do you have anything by Michael Carrey?” Chloe groaned, and Maze had disappeared somewhere in the stacks of books to investigate her day yesterday.

“Luci we don’t have time for this.” Amenadiel admonished but Lucifer and the shopkeeper had already headed down an aisle, discussing how hard it was to find certain copies of things and that so few people appreciated books anymore.

The move left Chloe alone with Amenadiel, something she realized with a start, that did not happen very often. She had spent hours upon hours with Mazikeen and Lucifer, but couldn’t think of the last time she’d had a real conversation with Amenadiel that went beyond the superficial pleasantries. 

“I’ve learned its best to just let him do his thing.” Chloe remarked, watching the angels shoulders slump. “He has a way of causing things to come together.” Amenadiel snorted which Chloe took to mean she was right. “Come on, let’s see if there’s any kind of security that might have caught Maze wandering around yesterday.”

Amenadiel trotted after her, taking his lead from Chloe just like his brother. It felt awkward. Shouldn’t she be the one following their lead after all? This surely could not be the first time they had to find out the truth or go on a fact-finding mission. Chloe knew Lucifer had some ideas about detective work, he had made passing references to it in the past and Mazikeen had experience in hunting down humans, something Chloe still didn’t think she was ready to think about. It had also occurred to Chloe that she didn’t know what exactly it was Amenadiel did in heaven. Chloe sincerely doubted he was Lucifer’s babysitter, even if the older angel might feel that way. “So.” She tried to think of a less awkward way to ask. She didn’t find one. “I guess this isn’t your usual dayjob huh?”

The angel snorted again, fully smiling for the first time that morning. “You could say that.” They stepped outside to see if any of the surrounding stores had cameras facing the bookstore they could look at and turned up empty. There was an alley alongside the bookstore that lead to another alley along the back of the shop, presumably for trash pickup and more parking.

The back lot had no cameras either but plenty of declarations of towing if an un-authorized vehicle parked there overnight. There was an old Bently in the spot reserved for the bookshop, and Chole let out a huff of frustration. It seemed their good luck at the shop keeper recognizing Maze was where their luck had run out. Amenadiel shared her sentiments, sighing and explaining the cupcake bakery next door only had in shop cameras when he rejoined her.

Empty-handed they both returned to the bookstore, the bell chiming to signify their entrance. Maze had emerged from the shadows only to take note they returned before scampering off again, going up a set of stairs Chloe hadn’t noticed the first time. Lucifer and the shop clerk were talking animatedly in a back corner of the shop, Chloe having to make her way through winding shelves to get to the pair.

“Chloe, he has a 17th century copy of Paradise Regained.” Lucifer had grabbed her arm to pull her to look at the book in the glass casing. “There’s so few copies left in good condition.” Chloe didn’t know much about the novel but smiled, trying to share in Lucifer’s enthusiasm. The shop owner simply shrugged, stating he was in fact a collector of all kinds.

“Did anyone come in after Maze did yesterday?” The shop owner gave her a quizzical look, and Chloe quickly panicked. She couldn’t say she was the police investigating because she officially wasn’t, and Chloe did not want to lie if she didn’t have to. “I was wondering how busy you get.”

The shopkeeper was not fooled. “You’re wondering about the man from yesterday aren’t you.” Chloe blushed and he laughed, wagging a finger at her.

“Guilty.” Chloe smiled, deciding to lean into it. How had this gone from a team effort to just her? Maze and Amenadiel had made themselves scarce and Lucifer was currently ogling the books looking like a small child in a candy store. It seemed that she would be the one doing all the detective work on their joint adventure of the day.

“Yes, he was quite apologetic he accidentally grabbed your friend’s coffee.” The shop keeper remarked. He leaned in, conspiratorially, like he was telling Chloe a secret, “He told me it was because he normally put alcohol in his and he’d put a bit in hers, she caught him pouring it in too.” The man’s kind eyes had widened at the thought. “Can you imagine? Ruining that lovely coffee they brew down the street with vodka. He even offered to buy her another, not that he looked like he could afford it, but she said she didn’t mind the taste of it. He ran out of here after that, I think your friend scared him off.” 

Holy Shit. Jackpot. It started fitting in place then, Chloe had assumed Maze had been knocked out with the gash on her head and all but what if she hadn’t? What if the gash had happened later? It made sense, the memory loss that and the fact Chloe had never seen Maze lose a fight. She would have gotten more injuries in a fight, drugs made perfect sense. But wasn’t she immune to everything? “What did this guy look like? Do you have his name?”

The shop keeper looked at her oddly, her eager tone making frown lines appear in his kindly face. “No, unfortunately he didn’t buy anything therefore no credit card receipt. I’d recognize him though.” The man temporarily became lost in thought. “He was older than you kids running around out there, I didn’t have my glasses on the time you see so I didn’t get a good look. He had an accent though. Not from here. If I heard him again, I could tell you” The owner explained apologetic. “I offered to call the police for her, men like that and a young lady, but she said she could take care of herself.” He stopped then “Is everything okay?”

“It’s quite alright.” Lucifer had reappeared and soothed the shop owner before Chloe could say anything. “We just wanted to give him a piece of our mind. It’s not okay to just run around putting alcohol in things.” Chloe had to swallow her laugh, turning it into a cough at the last second. Lucifer gently patted her back “She gets sensitive around dust” he explained to the shop keeper. “How much did you say it was again for that copy?”

Lucifer went to the ancient cash register to check out and in the process got distracted several times by books along the way while Chloe found Maze and Amenadiel on the second floor, having a whispered argument. They both stopped when they saw her, clearly not willing to share whatever it was they were bickering about. Chloe just told them to hurry up outside so they could talk. Intrigued the demon followed hot on Chloe’s heels, Amenadiel having to move much more slowly to not knock into anything.

As soon as the chime of the door quieted Chloe began trying to put her theory together. “Maze what drugs affect you?” Chloe had to blink multiple times to get used to the light of the sunshine again, the dimness of the bookstore was much darker than the outside world. Much quieter too as she re-orientated herself with the sounds of car horns, random passerby and dogs.

“None of them” The demon answered casually, glancing through the window annoyed Lucifer was taking so long.

“You’re sure?” Chloe asked again, getting an annoyed huff from Maze.

“You know Maze that’s not entirely true.” Amenadiel added, stepping forward to be closer to the pair of them. It seemed Chloe was not the only one who felt like the odd one out, something that Maze clearly picked up on and earned him an eyeroll. “You do have some weaknesses-“

“Old news.” Maze retorted, “It’s not like anyone has the stuff here.”

“Has what?” Chloe asked and Maze sighed, her mouth forming a thin line.

“There’s an extract of plant that affects me. You humans call it an allergy.” Maze shrugged. “The plant doesn’t really grow many places anymore, but it really messed my system up. Humans thought it exorcised demons for a while when possession was still a thing.” Chloe blinked taking in all the information.

“Is it possible the plant came back, like as an extract or a seed or”

“What are you getting at Decker?”

There was no easy way to do this. “The shop keeper said some guy tried to put alcohol in your coffee yesterday. You caught him but drank it anyway because you thought he just spiked it with vodka. What if it wasn’t vodka? What if it was a drug instead? You said you didn’t remember coming to this shop, what if it was because you got dosed right around the time you came in?”

“You think it was drugs that knocked me out and are responsible for the memory loss?” Maze looked thoughtful, “There’s a few things that could do that if the right person knew what they were doing and what I was. Certainly nothing commonly manufactured” Maze then looked worried, strolling back to the bookstore to go check on Lucifer. He reappeared at the door as Maze opened it, carrying two bags and promising to owner to come back in the future.

“While you all had your nice chat I was doing real detective work.” Lucifer declared, “The owner mentioned selling an old volume on alchemy and brews, very old, just last month. It apparently sat in his store for years before an interested collector came and bought it. Someone new, they said they had just moved to Los Angeles and he hasn’t seen him since. No negotiations, they paid a hell of a lot more than the book was worth too, don’t let his little old man act fool you he drives a hard bargain. And, they paid in cash, classic bad guy move.”

Amenadiel looked upset. “Cain wasn’t avoiding Lucifer, he never meant to face him. He was doing a test run.” The idea sent chills up and down Chloe’s spine. “He must have known things were going bad, looked for a backup, found one, but didn’t have time to test it until now. He must have used a lackey to test it so Maze didn’t see it coming.” Amenadiel looked even grimmer with it all spelled out, his facial expression in contrast with the bright neighborhood and the beginning of the lunch crowd starting to travel down the sidewalks, all bright and cheerful. “He has to know it works now.”

“What does that mean?” Chloe demanded, looking for answers in her companions’ faces. Maze looked upset with herself while Lucifer just looked angry. His mouth was set in a hard line and in that moment Chloe was confused as to how she hadn't seen he was exactly what he had proclaimed to be. The Devil on a mission. 

“It means Cain just got much more dangerous Detective.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! My apologies this is posted later than usual, I try to aim for Mondays as an upload day but wasn't happy with the chapter in editing, so it got scrapped and I wrote this instead. I hope you enjoy and once again thank you for reading! Also, I love Good Omens and while there are no cross-overs planned in the future, I hope other fans of the series enjoy the little Easter Egg.


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the devil speaks with his Therapist.

Their excursion in off-the-books sleuthing may have been less fruitful than he had hoped, okay much less fruitful then he had hoped, but it hadn’t been an entire waste of time. He’d picked up several novels he had lost over the years and the experience had brought them all together. The Detective seemed to have provided the glue that their rag-tag group had needed to stick together, provided a balm to their rough edges and soothed their conflicts over before they had bubbled to the forefront. There was a lot to handle but somehow they had gone the afternoon without physical blows or threats of bodily injury, which had to have been a record of some kind for them.

Mazikeen had vanished the moment her disappearance was no longer a mystery, both of them having privately agreed the small vial had been what had done the trick. Lucifer could admit both Mazikeen and himself had gotten lax about watching for things like poison. It had been a staple in their lives before coming to Earth full time, having to be on the watch for it constantly. It was a small comfort to at least know what their former friend had been used for, an ingredient. Lucifer didn’t know which fate disgusted him more, being a useless pawn used to send a message or as an ingredient in a potion to knock out creatures with origins far from Earth. Other things on the ingredient list at least gave them a start, only certain people dealt with certain Earthly oddities. Bones of massacred humans, things connected to certain sins of a large scale. Cain had given himself away by trying to use the stuff, he just hadn’t known it at the time.

It also required a massive shift in planning and priorities, it seemed the man was growing bolder and bolder in his efforts to get close to them. While operating in the shadows. Which meant instead of using brute force, they would have to take Cain down through deception. The first sinner was no longer a bull in a china shop causing sheer destruction wherever he went, he was something craftier. A spider perhaps. Too bad he’d chosen to pick a fight with Lucifer.

That was the problem with men like Cain. They always thought they had to outsmart their opponent, to have some giant master plan. It usually never worked, too many variables and too many opportunities for failure. Lucifer preferred a different approach; planning was good but failsafes were better. He’d become the strongest force of hell not because he had used sheer brute force or had concocted some giant plan and predicted how events would occur perfectly but because he’d managed to adapt to the situation around him and work it to his advantage. In theory Cain would have learned that, being able to be around as long as he had. But no, it appeared Cain would be sticking with a master evil giant plan to get his revenge. How boring. Chaos was a ladder to climb, not a worse case scenario.

Despite boredom though, things required a readjustment he thought idly in the car as Chloe drove back to Lux. That much was certain.

He’d invited her to talk sometime to form a plan only to be informed it was Taco Tuesday and she needed to go home and grocery shop before Trixie got home from school. Right. He’d sent her off then, wanting to come along but simultaneously not wanting to be rude. She’d hesitated before resolutely turning on her heel and walking out the door. She’d acted like she was waiting for him to invite himself, which he usually had no problem doing, but he had clearly dismissed her. Lucifer did not think he could manage to turn his brain off to act semi-normal for one night, to act the way the Detective would need him to act. Besides, Detective Douche did not want to be around Lucifer, he’d made that very clear. It felt wrong to press the issue to make himself feel better when Dan was clearly suffering and needed something. The last thing Dan needed was to feel Lucifer was encroaching on another aspect of his life. Lucifer didn’t think he could be around Dan at the moment either, not with the knowledge they’d had learned today.

No, it was better that the humans spend a night without him, even if he wanted to be there. Reminders of things he didn’t have, normalcy and family, would only make things worse. His mood was sour enough he would have picked a fight with Dan just for the sake of getting it out. Something that would have been deeply unfair to the human. It would not have been Dan’s fault if Lucifer showed up just to annoy him into reacting.

Talking with his other human friend who knew about him would simply have to do. He’d wandered into her office space, aware it wasn’t his usual day but not really caring. He’d managed to buy off her 4:00 o’clock to switch spots with him in the lobby. Linda hadn’t seemed surprised to find him outside waiting for her. It was almost like she had expected it, and she looked sad in a way that bothered him but he couldn’t put his finger on.

Lucifer had thought he had a good grip on emotions but the more time he spent working through his own the less sure he felt about other people’s. The more he learned and the more nuanced the emotions became to him the less control he felt. He’d often complained and whined his father was a control freak but in truth Lucifer knew he had his own issues with control. More accurately, he had trouble relinquishing it. The more he dived in to his mind and past the less control he felt he had, and the harder being able to push people around him became. Originally it had been so easy, just push a few core emotions around once a motivation was established and Lucifer was well on his way to getting what he wanted. It had worked for a time, but now, now when there were complexities and emotions with bigger weights on the line, it wasn’t working anymore. He could deflect simple anger with a distraction, he couldn’t deflect his own rage. He could distract himself from feeling sad by having meaningless fun but he couldn’t handle what felt like soul crushing despair with random sex. Not that random sex appealed to him as much anymore. The spark, the fun of it was gone once Lucifer had gotten to feeling emotions on a deeper, less superficial level.

“What would you like to talk about Lucifer?” Linda seemed open and caring and it made him wonder again if she had been sent from above. He’d learned she wasn’t of course, being as human as she could be at times. But somehow Dr. Linda Martin had gained divine level amounts of patience and compassion. He’d wondered if that had been why he had come back that first time, her levels of empathy were much higher than the normal human beings.

“Well where do I start? I got kicked back to the sidelines after one day back, nearly got myself blown up and just discovered Maze getting herself demon-napped was for a test run with stuff Cain wants to try and kill me with. You know, normally Tuesday stuff.” Her eyebrows arched and Lucifer hated how his voice had risen at the end and given him away.

“It sounds like normal Tuesday stuff upset you.” He snorted not answering for a few moments. He really needed a demon or two who worked the way her mind did, going over memories and examining them painfully, it was the kind of pain Lucifer himself had never been able to master. Lucifer and Maze could inflict torture on the mind and body, but Linda, Linda could break a soul. That was far more powerful than breaking of minds or bodies. Linda didn’t know it, but if she had wanted to, she could have easily broken him in two, leaving him even more scarred and in multiple pieces. The kind of damage Linda could cause him would be felt for many years after her death, through the end of the universe. It was unnerving every now and then to be confronted with something so capable of destroying him and yet so much wanting to be his friend.

“What part in particular gave you that impression?”

The cut of his tone didn’t bother her. She didn’t even flinch at him, she looked at him with the same everlasting patience she always had. “Don’t do that Lucifer. We are not beating around the bush today. Not when you buy off someone else’s appointment time.”

“Even if I tell you the burning bush was me?” Her head tilted and he could see she was momentarily interested before regaining her composure and not dignifying his statement with an answer, just fixing her gaze at him and neatly folding her hands in her lap. He sighed and sunk back farther down into the couch. It had worked for a while, dropping little tid-bits of history to distract her when her questions got too close. She knew what he was doing but had chosen most days not to push him until he was really ready to let it surface. Normally Linda let him get away with the avoidance. Normally.

“Things were okay.” He offered as a peace offering and she nodded, wanting him to continue. “Even when things were ugly, it felt okay.”

“What’s changed?”

“Well everything!” He was on his feet now, the nervous energy needing to go somewhere. There was no piano, nothing to distract his hands. “The Detective knows now, what I am. She has the Vatican rubbing her face in it.”

That gave her pause. “Chloe had always stated she was an atheist. Why is she talking to a Priest?”

“Because they keep following her around!” He couldn’t keep himself in one place, moving back in forth and repeating the process when he ran out of room to pace. “She says they’re just harmless but obviously Cain told them and they’ve shown up.” A bitter laugh came up “They’re trying so hard to convince her when they don’t actually need to convince her at all, and yes I appreciate the irony.” He briefly turned his head to the ceiling, as though his Father was actually paying any attention.

“Why do you think Cain would do that?”

Lucifer collapsed on the couch again, the sturdy frame not budging under him. “Because he’s out to kill me. What better way than bringing in the people who think I’m the worst thing in the history of ever as a distraction.” She nodded, seemingly conceding the point to him. “Even if I kill him this time, they won’t see that. They’ll just see me killing a human.”

“So clear something up for me, if Chloe knows the truth about who you are and still asked to work with you, why is the Vatican a distraction?”

“Because she’ll be forced to listen to them.” Linda shook her head and he knew it was time to try again. “Because she might believe them.”

Linda tilted her head and studied him again. “If she’s dodging them and rejecting them, that doesn’t sound like someone who is on their way to believing them.” Linda shifted in her seat, studying him harder. “If anything, it seems their presence bothers you, not her. Yet you focus on her reaction.”

“Linda keep up, it’s because they are bothering her, not me.”

“Are they though?” Lucifer sucked in his breath and clenched his teeth and Linda had a small smile grow on her face. Damn it, he’d walked right into that one. And that was why she was worth whatever she charged.

“They won’t even speak to me. They corner her when I’m not there. Bloody insects.”

“But they still manage to bother you. The thought of them telling Chloe things they believe about you behind your back upsets you. In fact it bothers you a lot.”

“You’d be this upset too if people ran around behind your back and said ugly things. That you’re responsible for all sin in the world, all that evil. Death camps, atom bombs, global warming and Justin Bieber. According to them it’s all my fault. Like I personally run around telling people to do evil.”

“It is true that it is very hurtful when people say things behind our back. But none of what they are telling Chloe is true.” She shrugged. “Chloe still chooses to work with you, still chooses to go on cases with you, even if they are off books. She even staid at your apartment when her own was being searched. It doesn’t seem like she believes them.”

“But it doesn’t matter.” Linda did not seem surprised at his disagreement.

“Why?”

“Because it just doesn’t.” It was a lame excuse. Lucifer had been constantly asking questions and never accepting a ‘because’ since the beginning. He’d always demanded a ‘why’. He’d annoyed his entire family, demanding explanations for things and the why of things.

“Is it because you’re afraid?”

He puffed at the ridiculous notion. “I’m not afraid of anything Doctor.”

“But you are though.” She’d stopped writing and focused on him completely like she always did when she was about to drop some earth-shattering revelation on him. “You’re afraid she believes them, even when she has evidence to the contrary.”

“She would never. The Detective has been nothing if not loyal to our partnership-“

“Then why did you not show her the reality of who you were until her life was on the line. You could have proved yourself any time, which she has pointed out. But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t want to hurt her.” He offered.

Linda shook her head. “Try again.”

“Because I don’t view my wings as part of me, they were stuck on again by Dad then my face disappeared. Which you are aware of.”

“Lucifer, you’re avoiding the issue.”

“Then by all means Doctor tell me what issue I’m avoiding.”

“Rejection.” He almost flinched, and the word made him feel small again. “The reason the Vatican bothers you so much is you’re afraid she’ll believe them and it will mean she rejects you.” Linda stopped, thoughtful. “Chloe now knows who you really are, and the thought she might reject you scares you greatly.

You’ve always held things back from her, kept her guessing just enough to question if it was really the truth or an elaborate metaphor. There were a lot of reasons you choose to do that, but chief among them is you did not want to lose her. She could not reject the person you are if she didn’t know the person you are.”

“That sounds very speculative Doctor.”

“Which part.” She had folded her hands in her lap again very neatly, and waited for his rebuttal. “Which part do you think I got incorrect?”

Damn this woman. “That’s still not why.”

“Then I want to hear it from you Lucifer.” She picked up her notepad and pen and hovered above the page, ready to write. “Answer me honestly. Tell me you didn’t tell her because you didn’t want to lose her.”

“But that doesn’t matter though.” It was weak and he knew it, and it seemed Linda did too.

“On the contrary, I think it matters very much.”

“Why.”

“I think you don’t think yourself worthy of someone caring about you the way you care about her. I think on some level, you’ve been running from telling her the truth because the reality is, you think if she knew the truth she wouldn’t care for you the way you’d like her to.” She paused to let it sink in and he felt he’d had a rug pulled under him. There had been so few moments in his life where he felt as raw about his own feelings as he did in the moment, and his silence told Linda she was right. “To avoid facing what you see as inevitable, you never gave her the chance to reject you in the first place. But that’s no longer an option.”

“No it’s not.” He still felt constrictions in his chest, like a giant weight had pushed down on him, snakes wrapping around his ribcage. It was vulnerability, on some level he knew that, but that did not mean he was okay with the feeling. Quite the opposite actually, he had sworn to Mazikeen thousands of years ago he would never feel vulnerable again and control his entire environment. And yet here he was, sitting on an Earthly couch and feeling like the walls were closing in.

“But Lucifer she hasn’t rejected you. She’s still there.”

“Not really. It’s not the same.” Her office suddenly felt far too small. “She monitors what I do constantly, never lets me out of her sight. She didn’t even want to tell me about the Vatican again, she won’t tell me what they’re saying.” He couldn’t stop fidgeting, fingers tapping out some unknown melody on the cushions besides him. “She doesn’t trust me like she used to. She doesn’t look at me the same, it’s all wrong.”

“Give her time Lucifer. Humans take a long time to process things. You’re still you and she’s still her, just with more information. She’s a very analytical person.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?” How could Linda not see that. “What if she decides she can’t be around me? What do I do then?”

Linda seemed sad. “I can’t promise you she won’t decide that. I’m not your father.” They both briefly smiled at that admission. “But from one human who learned who you are, it doesn’t change the reality. Sure, the origins of the universe aren’t what I thought and things in the world are a little more messed up than I thought they were; but knowing that didn’t change who you are as a person. The fact the divine really exists is a lot, a lot a lot. But Lucifer, the fact you are an angel in origin does not change the fact you care about people. The fact you were put in charge of hell does not mean you have no compassion or empathy. Being the devil didn’t automatically make you a monster like you seem to think.”

They’d ended up going into softer, safer topics after that. He’d needed time to think, process what she meant and its implications. The real fear of his had come out in the open, being acknowledged for the first time and he felt drained to an incredibly large degree. It was one thing for the fears to sit on the edge of his conscious mind and sneak up on him in dreams or at random parts of the day, but acknowledging it felt wrong. Linda had told him long ago that acknowledging the thought and the fear, would help downplay the thought and its actual severity. But the problem here was, the problem was very severe. Pushing it out would simply not do.

But he supposed that was what alcohol was for.

Lux thrummed through his entire person, even with no one inside yet things were always happening. He knew the newest bartender was trying to date one of the dancers, the bouncers were trying to keep a lid on the fact they accepted a bribe here or there, and a cocktail waitress or two were in the back fussing over clothes. It felt more familiar to him then hell ever had, and it simply had one word. Home.

Which of course was why his mother had chosen tonight of all nights to appear in his penthouse upstairs. Lucifer had been trying very hard to stay away from the rowdy party that would begin even before the sun went down on the bottom floor, knowing he was self-destructive enough to do something stupid if he went beyond the elevator doors. It didn’t help of course that his mother’s presence was enough to drive him downstairs.

“Hello mum.” Was all she was going to get, a fact that instantly miffed the goddess of all creation. No matter. She could deal with being ignored for a minute while he poured himself a bottle of something. Bourbon felt too festive, Tequila was maybe too punishing. Maybe something craft brewed, that would be nice.

“Lucifer did you even hear a word that came out of my mouth?” brought him back down to earth. His clueless shrug was enough to set her off. “Honestly Lucifer, I am trying to help you!”

“Help me do what?” It was kind of fascinating and horrifying at the same time his mother had never picked up on the fact Lucifer played dumb sometimes to get more information out of her. Did she really pay him that little attention or did she simply never learn?

Her face scrunched up and her hands were balled into fists and she even stamped her foot a bit. It was kind of cute when small humans did it, his mind allowed, but not when it was an all powerful being of creation. He was amused to see she did a few deep breathing exercises, a gift he had given her as a joke on meditation that she seemed to have taken to heart. Maybe it had been for the best.

“I am just trying to help you find Cain. That’s all. His purchases to get the required ingredients in that little book should lead you straight to him.”

“So it was you?” a cold fury bubbled up and Lucifer couldn’t remember the last time he felt real rage. “You’re the one who gave him the idea.”

The question seemed to insult her. “Well of course I was! You don’t think he would have just managed to find the one book that actually had the correct ingredients and correct amounts in it on his first try now do you?”

“Get out.” She didn’t move. “Get out, get out get out!”

She rolled her eyes at him, as though she was above him and his anger. “Lucifer, calm down. It was for the greater good-“

“Whose greater good?” He pulled up another bottle and grabbed another glass to pour the liquid in. When he was unable to find a clean one he settled for drinking straight from the bottle. “Certainly not Cecilia James! Or Mazikeen’s!” at her befuddled look the rage grew, happy to have an outlet. “You know, the human he MURDERED to get the concoction to work.”

“Oh relax. She went straight through the pearly gates, no questions asked.” Of course she would see it that way. She had always hated humans from the start, it must have been no problem for her to just let one tangentially connected to him die. She would not have cared for the girl’s attempts to change her life on earth because to his mother, no human’s life mattered. They were just tools, means to an end, and when their purpose was fulfilled they were to be discarded, thrown away like trash instead of the precious soul they were. Lucifer had no love of humanity as a whole, but some, some individual humans were not all terrible. His mother was blinded by her own sense of importance she failed to see that.

“That’s not the point!” His body was shaking, and the fires of hell pushed through his entire body, looking for an outlet, some place to go, some person to punish. He didn’t need a mirror to know his body was changing, the hellfire changing him from the inside out. The glass shattered in his hand, leaving little pieces of glass that were melting down to sand everywhere, leftover alcohol going up in flames on contact. “What the hell is wrong with you!”

She simply crossed her arms, pursed lips, clearly deciding that paying no attention to him would make him put the fire away. She avoided looking at him though, his own mother couldn’t even bring herself to look at what her son had turned into. It burned more than the fire did, to know not even his own mother could bring herself to look at him in this form.

“I’ll come back another time.” She stated, and he noticed she did not sound as regal or as pompous or as full of herself as usual. “We’ll discuss when you aren’t as emotional. Now take the lead I helpfully provided for you and track down Cain.” With a crack she was gone, leaving behind an ugly mess of an angel in her wake. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to apologize for the long delay. Recently my SO and I ended and loving Lucifer was a very big part of our relationship so it was a painful catharsis to write this chapter. I plan on continuing, just ask you all be understanding that some chapters may be harder to get through than others. And I still am trying to edit on my own, so all mistakes are mine and mine alone. 
> 
> And as always, thank you for reading. You all have been so supportive of my writing journey and I cannot thank you all enough for it. Also, promises the next chapter will be longer and more action packed. I just felt a conversation with Linda was important to have moving forward.


	10. Chapter 09

The morning had passed without any incidents. They were no closer to unraveling the mystery of the bomb but she had been told to expect questioning sometime in the future. Despite checking every car in her apartment complex and taking Trixie a different way to school, no Priests in dark sedans had followed her. No one had followed her actually; she’d checked several times under the guise of stopping by a place to get breakfast tacos with Trixie before school.

Maybe it was her over paranoid cop self-telling her that calm wasn’t good because it meant she didn’t know what was going on. This calm did not feel peaceful, it felt like the stillness before the sky opened and poured rain down. The hardest thing she had learned as a detective was patience. Just because you had the answer in front of you didn’t mean the right time to strike was that exact moment. They would need to form a strategy, gain more intel and work on a precise plan of attack. They needed to get lucky every time they went after Cain and his men, but to kill them, Cain and his men would only need to get lucky once. Chloe had never really believed in luck, even now hearing from one of the most powerful beings in the universe Cain was destined for an end did not inspire her any confidence. It did quite the opposite in fact, if an all-mighty God was sending them to do the deed, how dangerous was Cain really? Couldn’t he just be smited down? She thought she remembered reading that somewhere in her binge of holy texts.

It certainly made a lot of Lucifer’s whining much clearer. What was the whole point of the two of them doing it, character building?

He’d been quiet all yesterday afternoon and this morning. Not a peep from his phone number, and she knew he’d found a replacement for his broken one. She’d wondered if he was just avoiding her but upon checking out every social media site he used, it appeared he had been quiet there too. And a quiet twitter account was unusual for the King of over-sharing.

She’d have thought him kidnapped if he didn’t pick up after the first ring when she called him after having dropped Trixie off. “ ‘Ello?” came the drowsy sounding answer and Chloe found herself briefly unsure what to say for a brief few moments. What was she supposed to say, ‘I’m upset you didn’t invite yourself to Taco Tuesday’ ‘Trixie missed seeing you yesterday’ ‘Did you make any leads without me?’ None of them fit quite right.

“ ’Tective? ‘Ello?”

“I just dropped Trixie off at school. I was calling to ask if you came up with any new leads last night.” Shit that didn’t feel like enough, it was pushing everything back to work, all about the case, less about what was going on. “I was hoping we could go over what we know today. Catch up on the head start he’s got.”

The line was quiet for a few moments and Chloe was instantly full of doubt. He didn’t need her calling him all the time to remind him of matters of apparent grave cosmic importance. He had been just as focused on finding Cain as she had, maybe even a bit more so considering how personal it had gotten. The last thing he needed from her was probably a lecture, which was it felt like she was doing.

“Can you bring coffee?” And Chloe almost laughed before telling herself sternly to get a grip. He could act weird, hell she was used to his weird, but her inability to keep it together was not going to cost them taking down Cain. Not when they were up against an actual monster. Despite having been helpful in the shop yesterday and having received all kinds of praise from the group for her ideas, Chloe still felt like she needed to earn her place. To prove herself useful, and it was coming out in all kinds of stupid ways. It felt like being a rookie again, when everyone had thought she was just a dumb blonde chick who wanted to pretend to be hero for a while. That thirst to prove herself, to constantly have a need to prove herself was back but it was coming out in an entirely different way.

“Yes. Coffee sounds excellent. I’ll get your usual, is that okay?

“Tell them to add more espresso.” Came the sleepy sounding reply and the call ended before Chloe could move for the button. If she didn’t knew him as well as she did, or at least thought she did, she would be offended.

She’d scolded him more than once about manners, because it seemed he had them but thought they were akin to fine silverware, only for use when fancy company was around. Amusingly she had started to use some of the same expressions with him as she had Trixie. It had been unintentional at first, a simple ‘what do we say when someone brings us something nice?’ and he’d gotten into the habit in public but sometimes he still slipped when he was grouchy.

Devils got grouchy, what did that mean for humanity? And if he got grouchy over early mornings what did a full-blown temper tantrum Maze had occasionally hinted at look like?

Fortunately for Chloe Decker and the rest of Los Angeles, his bad mood was apparently able to be cured with espresso. The Barista had handed her the coffees to go without even blinking at the large amount of caffeine that was in the drink. It had to be enough to send someone without a supernatural body into an early grave or at least a trip to the doctor’s. She’d long known he didn’t do things in small doses and maybe that was why. It took so much to feel anything, what seemed like excess to her was maybe normal for angels. But she’d seen Amenadiel knocked down over cosmos, so maybe it was some secret hellpower. Or they’d just built an insane alcohol and drug tolerance over years of being alive. Maybe hell was actually really boring and there was nothing to do down there but drink.

She still wanted to know but it still seemed such a taboo subject. He’d only ever brought it up in reference to something horrible or to assure people he wasn’t ever going to go back. Maybe it was like Dante’s Inferno and it was enterally cold. Gave new meaning to his point of arranging hell to freeze over to win an argument, and while she had laughed at the time she wasn’t sure if she should still laugh or be horrified. Freezing an entire plane of existence, on a whim? And yet she was the thing that made him weak.

Scratch that, not even weak really. If Chloe really gave it a lot of thought, and she had, she reasoned she was more a chink in the armor than anything else. An Achille’s heel. She’d seen him do the impossible and he hadn’t been trying to show off, Chloe didn’t know if her brain could comprehend some of the things he was capable of. And what did it say about Maze that he considered her his bodyguard?

The barstaff was used to her presence, she had stopped bothering them every time she came in the door. She had been suspicious at first, at the way they all went out of their way to prove they weren’t doing anything suspicious or sketchy in the back, but had come to realize they just didn’t like strangers during hours they weren’t meant to be there. One too many run-ins with Instagram influencers or people trying to get a moment of the owner’s time had made them weary to strangers, no matter what uniform they came in. Once they learned she truly wasn’t there to make things harder, they had relaxed completely in her presence and gone on to treat her like she was a background fixture. It was kind of nice, she reflected while typing in the stupid code to get in the elevator, to be treated like a table in this instance. She wasn’t anything special or something that stood out, there was nothing that questioned her belonging or her being there, she was just the cop that worked with their boss sometimes and she was a totally normal sight to see.

Chloe realized it was why he considered Lux his home, and not heaven or hell like she had originally suspected. She had treated his original declarations of liking and seeing Earth as his home with disbelief, as what did Earth have that all those places didn’t? After all, what was the point of being a king if you ran away from the kingdom? She knew now that Hell may have been a kingdom and he may have made himself the ruler but it wasn’t home, it wasn’t what he wanted. It must have been like her saying the station was her home, just because she worked there it didn’t mean it was her everything. Lucifer lived to live, not to work like he nagged at her so often when she had insisted on doing paperwork late into the night.

The idea of him missing hell when it wasn’t even a job he had wanted or liked must have seemed outrageous to him when he first came to Earth. If only people knew. Really knew.

“Hey, Lucifer, I got your coffee. IS this amount of espresso just a supernatural quirk or-“ Whatever small talk her brain had thought up ended up dying as she took in the shape of the loft. Lucifer was neat freak, everything was usually immaculate. It usually looked like a page out of a home magazine, which in hindsight she realized it probably had been. That looked nothing like the unorganized chaos in front of her.

He was still in clothes from yesterday, shirt wrinkled in a way that made him seem human. Jacket tossed over a chair by the bar and then covered in various forms of booze. It seemed like he had started drinking out of glasses and then abandoned the idea of it halfway through and returned to drinking straight from the bottle. There were papers stuck all over the apartment, the pens Dan liked he had complained people took from desk and a startling amount of yarn for someone who proclaimed knitting was lame and the only thing the needles were good for was poking out eyes.

“Oh good you’re here.” He stumbled over and took her coffee cup out of the drink holder with both hands. He’d managed to drink half of it before realizing he’d grabbed the wrong one, muttered something that sounded like a sorry and then grabbed his and drank it like a man finding water after wandering a desert. “You can start working on stuff from the 30s” The empty coffee cup landed on her shoe but she was too bewildered to care. He had started ruffling through papers, scans and photocopies of things that were arranged in a haphazard pile on the bar.

“Lucifer have you been working on this all night?”

He grunted noncommittally. “Not all night. I had to go get yarn.” He looked back at her and Chloe knew it was the expression he wore when he was hoping she was impressed with something.

“Yarn?”

His shoulders slumped and she felt bad for disappointing him. He turned back to the pile and came up with a thumb tack and without a single care in the world shoved it into the counter and wound a piece of yarn around it and held up the other end. “Do they not teach you this in Detective school?” He’d clearly been watching way too many films and tv shows but it was kind of sweet in his weird Lucifer way. He’d been committed to doing this her way and Chloe supposed this was an extension of that. 

“Yeah but usually we don’t have this much to connect.” She set her own coffee down and took the other end of yarn from him. “Where does this end go?”

Up close she could see circles starting to form under his eyes and she wondered again if he had slept. Then again, people who slept didn’t make this much of a mess trying to connect things.

“Over by those cabinets. I have a color system all figured out and everything. I came up with it at about 2 this morning.” He was excited and talking fast and it was hard to not be swept up in his excitement. “Red is for things we know he definitely did, pink is probable and green is for it was him-adajacent but not actually him.” He gently pulled her over to the biggest mess of yarn and papers that made up the wall with the fireplace. It was full of copies of pictures that looked like they belong to a medieval monastery and of journal texts. “See, this is the earliest record of a place I could find him in that actually fit. We can track him through here, because he only has so many places he can go on Earth right?” Chloe nodded, still not sure where he was going. “So it would make sense he didn’t go the same place more than once? People ask questions, why don’t you die, are you a witch, blah blah blah.” He then pivoted and ran to another section of the apartment “So I started looking for him in other places right? He’d stick out like a sore thumb so he should be easy to spot in historical record. But you know what I found?”

“What did you find Detective Morningstar?”

He puffed up a little at the name. “Nothing!” Clearly the revelation meant more to him than it did to her. He seemed slightly disappointed again. “If he didn’t show up in records in Africa, or anywhere in the Americas until European explorers or in Asia that means…”

Then it clicked what he was getting at. “He stays in his comfort zones.” He beamed at her, pleased she had caught on. “He stays where he blends in, doesn’t like to stand out. He could have become a King and grabbed a huge amount of power but he didn’t. He staid in hiding.” Her burrow furrowed, maybe that would work in tracking him down to a continent in a time period before the modern era but there had to be more to the story.

“And that tells us what?” His voice was almost sing-songy, and he kept fidgeting with his hands like he couldn’t contain the energy he wanted to release. He waited a full beat before he answered for her “He only goes to comfortable places. Haunts he’s familiar with. He doesn’t like to move. He’s a creature of habit. Which means we can better track where he has been.”

“He told me he hadn’t really ever staid in LA long.” Chloe mused, “He mentioned Chicago a few times, same with New York.”

“Right. All large major metropolitan areas it’s easy to disappear in. Add in the criminal enterprise part and it makes perfect sense. He can become a figure, remember we assumed the Sinnerman was a title, well what if-“ he stopped to rummage through a pile of what Chloe realized were badly printed photos of newspaper microfiche, “he’d been doing it for much larger than we thought?”

 _The Sinnerman strikes again, JG Harding’s bank robbed in daring heist._ Read the Sentinel Daily from 1875, a newspaper right outside New York.

“So you’re thinking by tracking where he’s comfortable we can figure out where he may be hiding out or planning to jump ship to?” He shot her a dazzling grin again before trying to sneak by her to grab her still unfinished coffee. “How did you get this stuff so fast anyway?”

He looked guilty, and Chloe knew it wasn’t for the latte he had been caught drinking red handed.

“So, turns out your Priest friend thinks he’s some kind of angel or demon and has been keeping tabs on him too.” Lucifer said as nonchalantly as possible and Chloe felt her eyebrows met her hairline.

“And how do you know that?”

“I kind of made an email that looked like yours, found him online and asked him to send me what he had.” He tried to look like it was no big deal and she could feel the anger bubble up. “What, he had information we needed and I got it. No harm done.”

“No harm done?” Chloe was surprised her voice shook. “No harm done?”

He was looking at the floor now only sneaking up glances every few seconds or so to see if she was still mad. “Chloe, he’s a nutter. The Priest not Cain, but he was a very organized nutter. He had something we needed for the investigation,” he was moving back between the pieces of yarn by his bar and trying not to disturb any papers. “Besides, you wouldn’t have wanted to meet him so this way we got everything over email.”

“Lucifer did it ever occur to you to not poke at a man who wants to send you back to hell and who can poison demons?”

He looked offended. “Well it did but I decided to do it anyway. Besides, he can’t force me back to hell. Especially after we take care of Cain.” Chloe didn’t know if he was trying to assure her or himself. The caffeine rush had died down and the strain was becoming evident on his system. “And we will take care of Cain. Even if it means I have to personally look into the soul of everyone in Los Angeles.” There was a finality to his words, and it made her pause.

“Lucifer, I’m not mad.” He popped up again, “Okay, that’s a lie, I’m mad you contacted the Priest without me but I think you’re right, talking to him was a good move. I just wish you would have let me do it with you.” He had visibly brightened. “We’re going to get him, you know that don’t you?”

A half-hearted shrug was all she got. Something was gnawing on him, as though Cain’s fate was anything but certain.

“I mean, your Dad has said it. Isn’t that it? His will be done or something like that?” That got a small grin but it wasn’t like the grins of earlier. It was Lucifer’s ‘I’m being polite and smiling because I’m supposed to grin.’ Nothing added up. “That is it right?”

“My mum gave him the book.” The confession shocked her just as much as it did him. “She told me, supposed to help inspire me to find him quicker. But she would have had to give him the book before anything happened, before Charlotte died. That’s the only reason he was able to incapacitate Maze for so long.”

“I’m starting to wonder if my Mother is up to something.” He continued to confess. “It wouldn’t be the first time.” His shoulders slumped at the admissions and the urge to comfort him took over. Chloe closed the gap between them and gently tugged on his arm.

“Come on, you need a nap.” Chloe had never been good with feelings. She had told Dan ‘thanks’ when he first said ‘I love you’ to her. And the most dysfunctional family needing her to help them sort things out may as well be a Herculean labor, one that Chloe did not feel equipped for. That was more Linda’s domain. But what Chloe couldn’t do with words she could do with actions, gently guiding him towards his room and pulling the curtains in it. “You lay down, I’m going to make you some tea. We’ll let your brain rest and in the meantime I’ll go organize the files you conned out of a Priest.”

“I did not con him” Came the weak protest but Chloe ignored him. She looked through his cupboards and managed to find a mug that did not appear to be dirty and managed to find a kettle to put on the stove. After wiping the stove before she turned it on she set out to find tea.

“There’s some on the shelf above the sink.” Chloe briefly thanked him before pulling down the small tea bag and guessed how many tea leaves to put in. Her kind of tea had always been made from a disposable tea bag, although it did not surprise her one bit that Lucifer was tea snob. If his general personality hadn’t given it away maybe it was the fact he chose to speak with a British accent. She’d asked him why and he explained no one took to hell quite like the British. Whatever that meant.

She managed to make some tea and not burn herself carrying it back to the bedroom for him only to find him asleep already, looking like he had fallen over from a sitting position. His legs dangled off the side and Chloe mentally wondered what the world was coming to as she pulled off his shoes. 

\--

He’d wandered out of the bedroom sometime after noon, looking frustratingly put-together for someone who had just taken a nap. She’d managed to make some sense of his apartment after she got used to his organization system. It had taken her a while to find the pattern but she eventually had managed to find he arranged files by vowels first, then constants. Maybe it made sense to him. She’d spent a good hour cleaning up all the alcohol and she still managed to find a random puddle or to causing some of the print-outs to stick together.

“Hey, how’s your head?” She asked, knowing he complained about getting hung-over when she was around. He grunted in reply, spending more time looking over what she had done to his apartment. There were no more precariously stacked files and papers, everything instead organized in neat rows. The dishwasher had been run a few times and all glasses had been returned to their proper shelf and the empty bottles had managed to make their way to a bag.

“Weren’t you bringing me coffee?” He asked, looking mildly amused at her efforts to tame the chaos of Marcus Pierce’s life, and that of his previous aliases that had made an imprint on history.

“You drank it already.” He humphed at that, obviously annoyed at his past self. “Can you create things?”

“You mean violate the laws of physics and create matter from nothing?” His eyebrows rose at her and she shrugged, feeling a little self-conscious. He smiled a little then, but it was more sad this time “No, that’s something that I can no longer do. Apparently after being involved in so much of the creative process my input is no longer wanted.”

Chloe wasn’t sure what to say to that, “Well what would you change?” He looked confused, like he didn’t quite understand her question. “If you could go back and fix or change one thing about how the universe works, what would you change?”

Understanding came across his face “No one’s ever asked me that before.” He seemed puzzled “Ask me again later, I’ll have to think of an answer.”

Chloe could count on one hand the number of times Lucifer had been stunned into silence in front of her. He shook it off quickly though, asking where he could jump in and help continue to file things and draw connections.

By the time they needed to leave to pick up Trixie they had created several solid probable paths Cain had taken through the past two hundred years. Some of his cities and time in them may have overlapped along the way, but Chloe felt closer to understanding the man than she ever had, even when she had been briefly engaged to him. It felt odd to be so far removed from his life and looking through bread crumbs, trying to pick up the pieces.

As they pulled up in front of the school right as the bell rang, Chloe wondered if that was what Lucifer’s dad ever felt like. Like watching everything happen around the world but being so far removed from it all. Lucifer had made several declarations about how his father didn’t actually care all that much about Earth but she also wondered how much of that was Lucifer and how much of it was actually true. Add in Lucifer’s mom being back, would that mean things would change?

Lucifer opted to stay in the car while Chloe went to go grab Trixie from the pick-up line, something about small children being able to sense fear. Chloe couldn’t help scanning the area around her intently for vans, dark blue sedans and men in Preacher’s robes. It wasn’t maybe rational but after Lucifer pulling his stunt, Chloe wondered if he would come back to bother her.

Despite Lucifer’s insistence that he would not let Father Kinley hurt her, Chloe still didn’t like the idea of being followed around. She’d had enough of that with the paparazzi as a kid and mentally ill individuals who felt they had a ‘connection’ with her. Chloe still hadn’t brought up the issue with Lucifer, they’d been doing so well working on things it didn’t feel like the time to bring up their issues.

Chloe knew Linda would scold her for avoiding the issue but how did Chloe bring up she was still reeling and trying to find her footing? It may seem on the outside she had taken it well, something Maze had helpfully brought up more than once in a way to try and be reassuring no doubt, but inside Chloe was in turmoil still. All the issues she had pushed away from herself in the wake of finding out ‘The Truth’ were resurfacing and demanding to be dealt with. Maybe calling Linda and having a girl’s night wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe getting Maze drunk to get her to drop the façade wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe even talking to Ella would help, if not with the issue itself just to have a normal conversation that didn’t revolve around angels, demons and answering the question of who prayed for the devil.

“What do you mean I can’t pick her up? I’m just trying to be helpful.” Chloe knew that voice and her heart sunk to her knees at the sound of Lucifer’s mother. They hadn’t explored much about his mother, except that she briefly borrowed the body of Charlotte Richards and she was persona non grata in heaven next to Lucifer himself. Maze had referred to her as ‘that bitch’ when she thought Lucifer wasn’t listening, which did not bode well for Chloe.

“Hi there, I was just looking for you!” Chloe interjected cheerfully and the attendant used the opportunity to escape the conversation. Lucky bitch.

“You were not.” His mother, did she even have a name, exclaimed and Chloe quickly pulled her aside away from the rest of the staff and parents. Somehow she had caught up on human fashion trends, and it was also clear that her son had gotten his taste for expensive clothing from her. Chloe mentally shuddered for the poor sales attendant who would have waited on her. Not that it was any use to try and move her to get out of the way, the mother of one of Trixie’s classmates was on her phone already, and Chloe knew what she would be talking about.

“What are you doing here?” Chloe forced herself to stay pleasant, even if she wanted to yell things like ‘what the hell are you doing trying to pick up my kid?’ it was probably unwise to anger the woman that could turn her into a flea with a flick. Brown eyes narrowed at her, sensing Chloe’s annoyance even if her tone had been perfectly nice.

“I’m doing you a favor what does it look like?”

Only someone not of this world could have made that conclusion. At her confusion the Goddess sighed. “Lucifer and you were working well together. I thought I could take care of interruptions.”

Unease went up her entire being and goosebumps pricked on her arms despite the warm day. She’d become more and more understanding of Lucifer’s insistence that every problem was related back to his family drama but for the first time maybe the reality of it hit her hard. His mom had been watching the two of them work on things together, listened to their conversations, heard her questions about the time period and listened to his cheerful impression of Robespierre. It felt incredibly violating and unfamiliar.

Before Chloe could explain to her that taking care of her daughter was in fact not an interruption Chloe felt her daughter collide with her side.

Chloe had known that at some point she would need to tell Trixie and probably Dan too. She could sense her former husband’s unease at the events, though she knew they came from a place of concern. Trixie was unusually perceptive; and had picked up on things Chloe had thought she had successfully hidden from her daughter. Chloe wondered if it would even bother Trixie, the only person who had taken Lucifer and Maze’s word about what they were. But now, in the elementary school pick-up line for kids was not the place.

“Who are you?” came her daughter’s very blunt question and Chloe inwardly groaned as she saw the class gossip hanging on every word.

“This is Lucifer’s mom honey. She came to visit, she wanted to pick you up to help you surprise Lucifer later but I told her we could all meet up later instead since I’m still on leave right now.”

“You know it’s really rude to gossip.” Lucifer’s mother had now advanced in the offending woman’s direction. “There was even a commandment about how awful it is.”

Luckily for Chloe and for Anthony’s mom Trixie came in as a distraction. “Is his dad coming to visit too?”

Chloe let the Goddess take that question, who in her entire existence had probably never encountered human children until very recently. “No, he’s unfortunately otherwise engaged.”

Trixie shrugged, having already forgotten and had instead regaled Chloe about her newest art project which was going to be done in the style of Picasso. The Goddess trotted along after them, seemingly confused at the fact people would not move out of her way automatically and that she had to stop before crossing the road. Trixie had quite politely reminded her and Chloe quickly intervened before the Goddess could react, saying it was a safety issue for the parking lot.

Lucifer had gotten out of the car and was smoking a cigarette, much to the irritation of a nearby soccer mom. His expression when he turned around at their voice was one of shock though he got his composure rather quickly. He stamped the thing out under his foot and plastered his best ‘everything is fine’ expression on his face.

“Lucifer you didn’t tell me your mom was coming!” Trixie exclaimed excitedly, running up to hug him. Chloe didn’t know if it was his mother’s presence or if Lucifer had just become better with Trixie over time but he returned her hug and gave her a head pat. Trixie laughed he still didn’t seem to understand human gestures and he bent over to listen to her whisper conspiratorially in his ear.

“The urchin would like to know if you plan on staying for dinner.” Lucifer relayed and got a shrug in response. Chloe would have to take her earlier statement about Lucifer and Maze being the most out of place people to ever enter the school parking lot, the title clear would clearly go to his mother. Even though she had spent time in the life of Charlotte Richards it seemed she was reexperiencing things for the first time again, combined by her baffled look at the nearby vans.

“Right. Well, why don’t we take Trixie home and can discuss later?”

“Aren’t you two forgetting you have work to be doing?” Chloe ignored her and instead went about getting Trixie to put her stuff in the car. As far as she was concerned, his mom his problem. She ignored the pointed glare for help and he switched from English to whatever angel was.

“Lucifer, your mother can have the front seat if she is coming with us.” Chloe stated as she climbed into the car. There was another minute of arguing outside the car before his mother carefully slide herself into Chloe’s passenger seat. Chloe almost made a comment but wisely chose not to and shifted the car into reverse.

The entire ride home was mostly Trixie talking as she was thrilled to have Lucifer in the backseat with her. Occasionally Chloe would comment or add in a question about her day but Trixie was content to talk the entire way home with Lucifer. For her part his mother was mercifully quiet and didn’t say anything like how she could have made the turn like Lucifer did sometimes. Chloe was well aware she would probably turn her irritation on the two of them the moment Trixie was out of ear shot and was also fully aware about how it wasn’t right to use her daughter as a shield.

Chloe silently prayed for Maze to have decided to come home as she pulled in the complex parking lot but apparently prayer didn’t summon demons. That was another thing she needed to figure out, was there an actual way to summon demons? Maybe there was a prayer antithesis as there was a dark blue sedan in the parking lot Chloe didn’t recognize.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Lucifer, will you go open the door and see if your friend decided to drop by?”

He perked up and was out of the car before she finished pulling into her parking spot. Not sure what was going on but determined to not be ignored by her son, his mother went right behind.

“She doesn’t like you does she?” Trixie commented from the back seat and Chloe wanted to just reverse the car and drive off and leave the two of them to sort their own issues out without her and her kid. When she finally met Lucifer’s dad that was going to be her first question, ‘why my life?’. It felt lately like all Chloe did was provide a buffer between the supernatural beings that surrounded her world, which wouldn’t normally be a bad thing, her dad had always said she had a knack for being able to bring people together. He had meant her parents of course and not the literal devil, his demon lieutenant, the first sinner, an angel who had recently regained his way, and the most estranged and dysfunctional divorced couple in the cosmos. Chloe’s life had stopped feeling like her own and she felt forced to be a player in a much larger game. Did any of her choices mean anything, were any of her choices actually her’s? She had desperately wanted to ask Lucifer when that feeling stopped, if that feeling stopped. Would she have to do something like eat an apple or two to shake it off? But like her question about what he would change in the universe, it felt a question so deeply personal it was hard to ask. Especially when his mother was listening.

“She doesn’t warm up to people easily. Like Lucifer.” Trixie had a retort but after not hearing yelling or screaming Chloe decided to escape the car. Whatever argument they would undoubtedly be having was either close to reaching a stalemate by now or someone had huffed off. 

Alternatively they were scaring the living daylights out of Father Kinley. Chloe briefly wondered if he would ever listen to the two celestials ahead of her or if he would be so set in his convictions he wouldn’t listen to either of them.

Based on what she found when walking up the corner she stopped short of rounding it when there was a dazzling glow that lasted for a full heartbeat before vanishing. Chloe anxiously turned for Trixie, only to find her kid wrapped up in digging through her backpack for something. Still she instinctively wrapped Trixie into her side, much to her annoyance. More rules she never thought she would have to make, no angel or celestial glamour or whatever the light was in front of her kid. It didn’t matter if her kid probably wouldn’t go mad, it was the probably part that worried her. There were so many disconnects between parts of her world, the gap was gulfing wider and wider between old and new things to worry about.

“Everything okay over there?”

Two answers bounced back. “Of course.” And “Define okay.”

“Safe for small human eyes.” Trixie tried pull away but Chloe hung onto her tighter, telling her to wait a moment to make sure there were no bad surprises for them on the other side.

“Oh, yes perfectly fine for urchins” and a less enthusiastic fine accompanied his voice.

He sounded pleased with himself and after rounding the corner Chloe could see why. Father Kinley had the usual fire in his eyes, a kind of energy he carried about him in his convictions. But instead of a typical flame of hatred and revulsion for the devil and the sheer insistence her very soul was on the line, there was one of awe and wonder.

The object of his gaze was of course Lucifer’s mother, who preened in the spotlight. Even if Chloe was a beginner to celestial stuff it was obvious what had happened, Father Kinley had confronted them and the Goddess had given him a flash of divinity that was enough to make him lose his prior plans.

“A Goddess, an equal in all his might.” More mummering came from the Priest but all Chloe cared about was her own daughter, who was getting an eyeful of crazy.

“Do you think you could let him have his revelation somewhere else besides my front porch?” It came out a tad more aggressive than she had intended, not that Lucifer took offense. He quickly got what she was getting at and opened her front door and walked over to her side and picked Trixie up in one fluid motion.

“Come on tiny human. Let’s make you some popcorn for snacks. We can even add the cheese stuff your mum doesn’t like so we don’t have to share.”

Chloe made her way to sidestep the Priest only to feel an icy glare on her back that began as a penetrating feeling of two dots of ice and grew down her legs.

The Goddess was stopping her from going anywhere, before apparently thinking better of it. “Go on with your child Chloe.” The quick mood change wasn’t something she was used too but Chloe wasn’t sure if she wanted to question her seeming good fortune. “I’ll deal with this problem.” The Goddess added and Chloe didn’t like the sound of that. She opened her mouth to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean before feeling the breeze gently toss her hair around and Chloe was left with an empty front porch, the sounds of her gleeful child coming from inside her apartment and more questions than she started with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi I suck at writing and updating in timely fashions. I completely redid my outline and changed a lot of things I wanted to do in the story, mostly because of the new content released so far about the new season to kind of fit in with what I'm expecting/what I'm putting together. I'm so very excited for what's coming and hope everyone is too. 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading along on this ride. We aren't going where I originally thought we were but I hope you enjoy the ride all the same.


	11. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the universe cannot leave it well enough alone.

Trixie had thankfully been easy to placate with snacks. Unlike her mother, Trixie was good about not asking questions when he didn’t want to talk. Which for a creature that normally never shut up was odd. It had taken him a while to figure that out, the kind of silence and avoiding the issue the small human did. But in the same way that she saw more than the adults in her life thought, Trixie had somehow learned along the way how to pick and choose what boundaries to respect.

It was odd, Lucifer thought to himself as he watched the small human set-up the microwave and stare at the popcorn bag turning around inside. Chloe would have instantly told him to go figure his mum out and reminded him that his mum was his responsibility. But Trixie, she had no such judgements. If anything she seemed to understand his feelings about getting away as far from the woman as possible.

“Are your mom and dad fighting again?” Trixie asked and there it was. The real crux of the issue. She may let him avoid dealing with his mother but went straight for the jugular in terms of other issues. Trixie couldn’t relate to disappointing mothers but as the child of divorced parents, she had picked up on that tension almost instantly. It had gone a long way, much farther than he had thought, when he was honest with her about his own parents not being together. He knew Maze had touched on a few stories of her own when the small human was sad about her own disappointing family. Which is why Trixie believing it was a family affair was really not surprising. Her big brown eyes stared up at him from across the kitchen and Lucifer desperately wished smoking was not banned in the apartment or for a drink.

“They would have to be talking to each other to be fighting.” He gently added and the small girl nodded, eyes returning to the microwave, least she let the popcorn burn. She understood then, knowing in an instant what he may be feeling. Lucifer had never pried about Chloe and Dan’s divorce, it hadn’t concerned him after all, but he knew any divorce was hard on people. Splits always were. Even harder on the kids involved. Hell, how many residents of hell, human and non-human, could back that up with experiences of their own.

“My friend Andrew’s parents fight a lot and not talk a lot.” Trixie added very matter of factly. “They told him he has to pick which parent he wants to go to his soccer game.”

“Football. It’s not soccer, it’s football.” He absentmindedly corrected her. The eyeroll he got in response told him his attempt at dodging the question had not gone unnoticed.

“Not the point Lucifer.” She sassed and she sounded so very much like the Detective in that moment. If there had ever been any doubt about whose kid she was it would have evaporated. “I thought they were talking to each other.”

“Well I suppose that’s changed.” And it dawned on him. If things between his mum and dad were going south, which while not great was not altogether unlikely, would his dad come after him next? Any good will he would have gained from not outright destroying mum or sending her back to hell would have evaporated and the full weight of Uriel landed on his shoulders and his shoulder’s alone. Father would no doubt see it was all Lucifer’s problem, it always was Lucifer’s problem wasn’t it? Lucifer was the problem, he changed everything he touched from Father’s perfectly crafted plan into chaos and unknowing. Like a cancer that needed to be removed, wasn’t that what he had said. Destroying every good thing he touched.

Yes, he very much wanted a cigarette in that moment.

“Maybe they just forgot how annoying the other person was.” Trixie tried to add helpfully. “Mom still gets mad at Dad for putting bread in the fridge but she doesn’t hate him.” Was there something he could explain, some metaphor so Trixie could understand what was going on. Then, as his thoughts caught up to him, was it even a good idea to contextualize it to her? How did you explain that two beings like his parents fighting could turn into disasters unlike anything she could ever read about? That would destroy her fragile existence without even a second thought?

“Why would anyone put bread in a refrigerator?” Lucifer wondered aloud and Trixie sighed dramatically, pulling the popcorn out of the microwave before the infernal dinging.

“Because it lasts longer or something. But not the point. The point is, you don’t know it’s the worst case scenario yet. It could just be them arguing over bread.” Trixie paused, thoughtful before handing him the bag. “Does God eat?”

Lucifer was temporarily dumbfounded but quickly found his footing. “He can if he wants to. He’s God.” Trixie nodded, knowingly. He rummaged around the cupboards, looking for the location of the cheese flavored powder they both liked on popcorn. He could never remember where she put it. “I tell you what though,” he managed to grab it from the spot above the microwave and mentally noted the bottle of wine hiding in the back. “He most definitely wouldn’t call this stuff” shaking the bottle “Food,”

Trixie giggled and pulled it out of his hands, ignoring the holes on the top and choosing to open the spout to dump on her popcorn. She technically wasn’t supposed to put on more than two shakes, but if she never shook the bottle did any amount she put on count as more than one shake? He really should have spent more time doing legal things on Earth, he did have a reputation for exploiting loopholes.

The front door opened then slammed and based on the lack of stomping, Lucifer guessed his Mum had taken off.

“You have the same rules as Dan.” The Detective dramatically announced, shaking her finger at him. “Your family, your circus. I am not doing it for you again.” She looked slightly angry but Lucifer knew it wasn’t at him. Well, mostly not at him. And in hindsight, running inside with Trixie may have been, well not courageous, but in all honesty Chloe handled his mum during a fit than he would have. Lucifer would have found a way to wind her up or his mum would have pulled him into some fight with Dad. Chloe had the virtue of not getting dragged into it by virtue of being human. Not that what you were had anything to do with what happened to you after a disagreement with Dad.

Lucifer wisely choose that moment to pull the bottle away from Trixie, screwing the cap back on with a fluid motion. He did two shakes over what had been his bowl and switched them out with Trixie’s. The glare he got was not unnoticed and he resolved to slip her some kind of money to buy her good grace for the switching. Or her own bottle of cheesey powder. “Did she at least go away?”

Chloe looked like she was seriously considering throwing something at him before her shoulders slumped, seemingly the interaction having taken out a large amount of her energy. “Yes Lucifer, I scared your mother away.”

“I’m impressed. Not even Dad can accomplish that feat. You really are a miracle.”

The glare he got in response showed that joking was not the correct response. The edges of her mouth curved up in a bit of a smile though, the self-satisfaction at putting his mother in her place overriding her irritation. As he had known it would.

“So, what movie are we watching today?” Lucifer asked, causing Trixie to perk up.

“We are not watching anything. You are going to go pick up stuff for dinner and I am going to watch Trixie do her homework.”

The small human groaned. “Maybe you should go to the grocery store?” Lucifer tried “You’re much better at that than I am. I wouldn’t even know where things are.”

“Uh-huh. Nice try you two.” Came the no-nonsense reply. “I’d come back to no homework done, cheesey powder everywhere and you all watching Frozen again. No.”

“We would not.” Lucifer tried to sound convincing. “We watched Frozen last time.”

He got a smile again before getting handed a list and told there were signs on the aisles, he knew how to read and there was no way he could get lost. Oh well.

She must have really been frazzled seeing as she didn’t even notice he didn’t have a car to get around in. Lucifer briefly considered stealing hers, he did have an affinity with locks after all, but decided that may have been pushing his luck. So angel-express it was, though how he would look bringing back groceries was up there next to things that looked ridiculous. Amendadiel’s face if he could see what Lucifer was doing flying would be priceless. He could even almost hear the self-righteous tone, ‘you went flying where humans could see you for that’ not even taking into account the fact he could hide himself from the world if he so chose. Besides, most of the population of Los Angeles was looking at their cellphone anyway, far fewer of them ever looked skyward anymore. What was there to even look at, smog?

True to her word there were indeed signs everywhere to show him where to find everything. Maybe he had never noticed them before, maybe he just wasn’t sure he was capable of doing things that were so sufferingly human on his own. He’d managed to get around LA on his own, all of Earth really but no one had truly shown him how to blend like the Detective. She’d been that missing piece that made things not so alien, that had allowed him to really feel all of humanity for what it was. All of humanity’s sins he had been well acquainted with, he’d had eons of exposure. But the actual goodness that could be in humans, the kindness and softness, the mercy. That was new.

She didn’t seem as upset when he came back, and Lucifer maybe wondered if this was one of those moments in which he should apologize. He’d found some thing online that had said if you had to ask whether to apologize, that you should. As much as Lucifer knew cowardice was something to apologize for, he feared it would have been made worse by bringing it back up.

For all his bravado about being afraid of nothing, Lucifer knew he had many different fears. None of them really so far out of the ordinary. He wasn’t afraid of things that went bump in the night, the only monster out there was man, and while he had seen his fair share of depravity, Lucifer wasn’t afraid of it. At the end of the day, man couldn’t hurt him the way they thought. Rejection, fear, hatred and judgement without having taken the time to understand him, that was what kept him up. The judgement of what he knew would eventually come, the Detective, Linda, Trixie, Ella and even Dan would look at him one day and see what he saw staring back in the mirror. And then they would leave.

“Detective, about earlier,” he started, the words coming out before his mind was ready with what he was going to say. For someone who took pride in being a chatterbox, it was surprisingly easy to become tongue-tied in her presence.

He gently reached out and pulled an errant strand of hair away from it’s crooked position, putting it back behind her ear. She was studying him and not for the first time Lucifer wished his gift had been mind-reading. It would be so much easier than the whole desire thing, no conversations required. Knowing his luck it would have been a moot point, her being immune to him. Still, the feeling of being a fish outside of water was at the forefront of his brain and while Linda had called the process exciting and growth, also making him wonder when the last time he had grown was, it was unfamiliar. And for a being that had spent literal eons doing the same thing over and over again, unfamiliar territory was scary.

“I should have stayed with you and not left you to my mother like that.” He smiled, trying to put all the charm he supposedly had on.

“No you shouldn’t have” she answered lightly, the words feeling harsh but the tone she said them in light and airy. “But it’s done.” A weariness crossed her features, a look about his parents Lucifer was well acquainted with. “Just,” she paused for a moment, as though the Goddess was listening to them. Dad that would be awful. “Don’t leave me to the angry goddess again okay?”

“Deal!” he agreed enthusiastically, getting an eyeroll in response. He’d always wondered about that, he had plenty to offer, even before they had struck up a partnership. She’d never really wanted a deal, she had never looked at him to be the answer to all her problems and woes. If there was one thing the Detective did not do, it was damsel in distress. It was weird feeling sure, but as he had tried to explain to Linda, it was less like feeling like an object and more like a person. People tended to not see him, they saw him holding their solutions. She saw him.

And she still hadn’t run away yet.

Chloe set the dish on the stove top, ready to bring the water inside to a boil. “Your mom wanted to know about case process.” Lucifer nodded, not sure where it was going. His mother always had a first, secondary and third reason for being interested in things. They would come unraveled in time or his mother, in her impatience for an emotional payoff, would make a mistake. His father was the master manipulator, that was true, but it wasn’t wise to discount his mother. Even if she did not have the patience to fell the city of Rome over a period of generations that did not mean her tactics were any less deadly. They could even be moreso, given that her timetable was much faster than anyone else’s in the family. Less butterfly wing flapping, more hurricane out of nowhere.

“Of course she does.” Lucifer reasoned, “one of my parent’s largest fights was over humanity. A brother killing his own brother because my father liked the smell of barbeque over an offering of grain was something of a bad omen to her. Cain kind of became a figurehead of that time period.” Lucifer noted, well aware of which of his own personal failings he had metaphorically made Cain the scapegoat of.

“Yeah I get that.” The Detective chewed her lip. “It feels like we’re missing something you know. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Lucifer’s spine tingled, knowing the exact feeling she was referring to. He’d felt it too, though out of some insistence to himself it was just anxiety or the fear of verbalizing his worry would make it real.

“Well,” he thought “What do we normally do when we encounter that feeling?”

“We go back over the evidence, look for any new things we overlooked, any possible connections to the side,” she trailed off, leaving the room to go dig through her bag. She hadn’t even noticed he used the word we, he hadn’t expected her to, but a small part of him hoped.

Maybe it was stupid. No scratch that, it was stupid. But maybe by reframing their relationship, proving just how much the Detective needed him on cases, would keep her from turning away. Because that day was coming, of that he was sure. Lucifer knew what he was underneath the pretty exterior, the glossy outer shell. He was a monster, if he hadn’t been one struck out of heaven he’d become one in the pits of hell. Demons were not an easy lot to rule, it required no hesitation, no softness. No mercy. He’d done things, seen things that would make her retch more than she had ever imagined. The true depth of human depravity was fully explored in hell and there wasn’t a part of it he had missed.

So when that ‘we’ went to something else, it wouldn’t be a shock. It would hurt like hell though. Literally, he’d felt hell before. The semi-conscious space had bended to him, bonding with whatever his soul was made of and left. He didn’t know where he ended and hell began sometimes. Maybe it was better he not know, that line of awfulness and the fuzzy angel he portrayed needing to stay on the path he so desperately wanted to be on. The path that included the Detective and her daughter, solving cases, stealing Dan's snacks and teasing Miss. Lopez and watching Maze and his brother fight and Linda with her gentle happy celebrations when he did something right. That path didn't have room on it for hell. 

Meanwhile the Detective was spreading out a few files on the counter, taking care to not get any of them in the spilled olive oil next to the stove. Her brow was furrowed and she was positively radiant. She had this way of being perfect when concentrating on something. He could almost see her mind working and yet the contents of what it was working on a complete mystery to him until a small smile came across her face as she fit the puzzle together. She had never looked at him like that, pure delight spilling across her lovely features when a clue came together.

“Dollar for your thoughts?” he offered, looking amused at her confused expression. “Inflation, interest rates, pennies aren’t worth what they used to be.” Something crossed her face and he felt guilty again, he had brought it up. The fact she was so many eons younger than him, had a much brighter life but one that had been so much shorter. “Anyway,” he redirected, not wanting the silence between them to stretch on. “You’ve thought of something.”

“Maybe something.” She said tentatively but became more confident in herself at his nod and smile of encouragement. “Okay you know how he moves around in his comfort zone, meaning he stays within certain geographical locations. Well what if he went to the same people?"

“You mean like a family business or company.” Damn, that was good. But after all, that was why she had the badge. He’d quite literally slaughter whatever he had to if he could get a demon or two half as smart as her. Maze was an exception, not the norm with demons. They were excellent at certain things, but the puzzles and intellectual detective work, no that was something that few demons excelled at. Some souls required a delicate touch and it was always hard to keep their punishments rolling. There were simply too many devious humans and not enough devious demons.

“Exactly!” she beamed at him and he soaked up the look like a plant in the sun. “I’ll give Ella a call, maybe we can look at long running establishments and see what we find.” She pulled her phone off the counter and Lucifer managed to sneak behind her to pull the pot off the stove, hurriedly stirring it to try and save the contents of the inside. Take-out was always an option, Lucifer didn’t understand the aversion to it, surely it wasn’t a money issue?

“Why don’t you invite Ella to eat with us, I’m sure we’ll have enough food?” He offered, trying to be pragmatic. His mother could not excuse him of wasting time or dawdling and that itch to find Cain had only been heightened by her reminder. The mystery of why Cain needed to be taken care of was one he hadn’t figured out yet but he planned on catching the man and shoving him in a pocket dimension or putting him in a hell holding cell until he got answers. Regardless of who he had the threaten to get them from. He would hang Cain by his ears or something equally as painful on the gates of heaven if he thought it would get him any answers.

He could tell something was wrong from the look on her face. And with Cain running about he didn’t even need to ask what it was. “Go” he told her, but it sounded like someone else saying them to her. “Go check on her apartment, I’ll watch Trixie. I’ll take her to Dan’s.”

“He has Dan too” came the soft reply. “While we were tracking him through 14th century France he was kidnapping people!” her voice went up a few octaves and it took patience only obtained through playing political maneuvering for a millennia with demons to not panic right along-side.

“We’ll take her to Linda’s then” he announced, coming up with the plan on the fly. “I’ll call Maze and Amenadiel. They will meet us there. No more splitting up.”

She nodded and hurried out of the room, Lucifer taking care to turn off burners and ignore the food that sat untouched inside them. So much for dinner, he wondered idly if the Detective would be opposed to a drive through, he knew Linda only eat weird health food. He dumped the contents into a large mixing bowl and hurriedly grabbed some utensils, the heat not damaging him. There was no point in wasting time, the part of him that he had forced down into dormancy was reawakening as it did in every crisis on the mortal plane they had faced. Some part of him that had roamed hell, hunted down his enemies and made them taste their own blood, some barbaric monster piece of himself was emerging and beginning to vie for control.

Like it or not, Dan and Ella were his humans. His. And he would always protect what was his, he’d destroy that stupid insolent human for daring think he could play a game with God’s light and vengeance. Lucifer was going to make him burn, then he was going to recreate Cain from the ashes and then give himself the pleasure of burning the man over and over.

Right now, if Lucifer couldn’t be the partner and protector he wanted to be for them, he could be vengeance. He could be the thing that went bump in the night, the terror that men felt in their bones. If he couldn’t be there for them in the way he wanted, the way he truly longed to be, he would settle for his role from a distance, a monster creature they knew existed and thanked for existing but also secretly hoping they didn’t get too close. He was a tool, an abstract entity, not a thing that got up close and personal with other beings, he should have known that.

But hunting down a sinner and giving them punishment for their misdeeds, well that was what he had literally been made for. And for once instead of fighting his true nature he let it thrum through his entire being until the part of him that was angel and devil were so mixed there was no longer any way to tell the difference between the two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, Life and Graduate School have been kicking my ass but I have the story mapped out (after a few revisions in direction and tone) and know fully where we are going, I hope you enjoy what I have planned. I know this chapter is a little short but the others I plan on being much longer, we just need to get there first.
> 
> I don't have anything like a consistent update schedule ability and write in between work and school deadlines, and write whenever I can. I do not intend to abandon this work and will take it to the end. If you're still reading thank you for staying on this journey with me.


	12. Chapter 11

If someone were to ever ask her to look back at this particular evening, Chloe couldn’t be quite sure how they got from her apartment to Linda’s home in Beverly Hills. They could have been in a clown car for all she knew, her mind wasn’t paying attention. Her detective brain was turned off, instead she was just moving into mind-numbing panic that had been at the edges of her brain the past few days. Trixie had figured something was wrong right away when Chloe went in to grab her own go bag, a bag of her essentials she had packed for the little girl in case her job as a police officer got too dangerous. It seemed laughable now that she had been so scared of Malcom Graham, he was a dirty cop who had spent a whole twenty seconds tops in hell. The people she was going up against now had literal eons in experience, had been there when the book on police work was written. It was almost laughable now at all her attempts to protect and shield her daughter from the reality of the world.

Lucifer hadn’t said much since the initial phone call. He would have scared her a few days ago, knowing what he was. But for some reason he didn’t, the way his mouth and eyes were set in a hard line and his jaw was clamped shut. She saw him unconsciously balling up his fists, over and over again and his normal fidgeting ramped up to an eleven. Now it made sense, looking at him and the unnatural stillness reminding her he wasn’t a human being. He was something much much more than that. And he was mad.

They managed to beat Mazikeen to Linda’s but not by much. The motorcycle pulled up while they were unloading Trixie, the giant bike out of place in idyllic suburbia. Maze looked more terrifying than Chloe remembered her being, or maybe it was just she knew what Maze was and that made her scarier. Her face had the same glint of steel in it Lucifer’s had and she briefly wondered if it was a supernatural thing or a hell thing. Amenadiel, standing on the porch didn’t have the same look in his face but it was reflected everywhere else. The angel and the demon seemed ready to fight, the more otherworldy ensembles they had on a dead giveaway. Amenadiel was in his odd robe get-up, if he had armor it was hiding. Maze looked more like Chloe would have expected, trading in thin leather outfits for more bulky pieces covering her from head to toe. Chloe had to stop herself from gasping when the motorcycle helmet was removed, an entire half of Maze’s face was gone. Then with a blink it was back, and if it wasn’t for the look Maze gave her Chloe would have doubted she saw it at all.

Trixie, ever more resilient than Chloe ever seemed to give her credit for, didn’t even blink at the transformations in the adults in front of her. And maybe, Chloe wondered again, if she should be taking notes from her kid instead of the other way around. Nothing had seemed to throw Trixie, not even the fact her dad and Ella were missing. She had asked Lucifer if he was going to get them back and punish the people that took them and the devil's resounding yes had been enough for her. Maybe it should have been enough for Chloe too but the confidence did nothing to remove the knawing worry in her stomach. 

Her train of thought was cut off by Linda, standing out on the porch looking blessedly normal. The porch light gave her a halo of light of sorts and Chloe mentally reminded herself to bring it up later if there was such a time they could look back at this and laugh.

Oh God. Chloe hadn’t even really thought about it, would Ella and Dan be okay? They weren’t what Marcus- no Cain- really wanted. Chloe didn’t really know what Cain’s motivations were except avoid hell and not have to follow the rule book like everyone else. But would anything they did matter? He’d been insistent that Dan and Ella were collateral and he wanted to discuss terms about his future. The cop part of Chloe’s brain knew that him having resigned himself to not making it out of this alive, that he was even thinking about hell did not speak well for Dan and Ella. Sure he gave his word but what good was his fucking word?

Chloe mentally cursed whatever higher authority would care to listen to her. If there was ever a moment for supernatural intervention, a sign from upstairs that was “hey things will be okay” now was the time to give it. And yet, silence.

Watching Lucifer and Maze converse in whatever language demon was, Liliam Maze had said, the word springing to her brain, Chloe wondered if it would hurt to ask for a sign. If anyone was even listening to them or if it would make any difference. She knew Lucifer would insist it was foolish and even though Amenadiel would protest she knew he wouldn’t outright contradict his brother’s current assessment of events. They were well and truly fucked.

But Dan’s mother, a strict Catholic woman, would have insisted it couldn’t hurt. And it was for her Chloe began, silently as she pulled herself up the driveway that felt like miles long. ‘Please God let Dan and Ella be safe and unharmed and bring them back safely. Please God let us bring justice to this monster that has roamed the earth for millennia. And please God keep your children, all of your children, safe while doing it’. There was no answer, not even a small breeze her brain could pretend was an answer. The few things in the night sky that could break through the light pollution of Los Angeles did not twinkle any brighter, there was no gentle whisper of air, or even something as subtle as a cricket chirp. The Earth was still and for those brief moments, Chloe could start to think she could understand how lonely Lucifer must have been all those years. Knowing that there were things out there that could hear you, could answer you, could acknowledge your presence, and yet they chose to stay silent. They chose to say nothing to you, even if it was just a thought or Chloe screamed until she couldn’t scream anymore. They were choosing to turn their back on them. Choosing to ignore them in their time of need.

It stung and Chloe didn’t even know who was ignoring her really. His weird friendship with Maze made so much more sense, the demon was loud and passionate about everything she did. There was no concept of the silent treatment with Mazikeen, and while Chloe had initially thought it odd two people as loud and boisterous as themselves being so close and not at odds strange, it made sense. The two of them found reassurance that they weren’t alone in the universe with each other and would scream it to the ends of the universe to prove it. Even if they were angry with each other, there were little pieces of the other person being just beyond the periphery, just at the edge. Avoiding to give space but not completely gone, still hovering on the sidelines. A true constant in their lonely universe.

“Hey there Trixie, your mom says you haven’t had dinner yet. Why don’t you help me look through a few things and help me decide on dinner?” Linda tried, clearly having gone the route of focusing on things she could control. Trixie did not look enthused but chose to not argue, going with the blonde woman into the kitchen. Chloe set her bag down on the couch, and was tempted to collapse on it herself. Linda’s home was reflective of the woman in many ways, warm and inviting. Everything was perfectly coordinated in the way that expensive furniture was and it felt put together. Chloe couldn’t help but notice a few things that seemed out of place, a gossip magazine on the side table next to a romance novel, and a yoga mat rolled up against the base of the couch instead of tucked away. It made her appreciate it, little touches that proved Linda wasn’t perfect. That she was human.

The nearby formal dining table had apparently become head of operations with Maze already combing through papers and unfurling a map, Amenadiel trying to help her organize and Lucifer drumming his fingers on the table, staring at the wood grain as though he was trying to memorize it.

She shuffled closer trying to see what on the map they were looking at when three heads snapped her direction. Chloe inwardly buckled, it seemed they were waiting for her to give them directions instead of the other way around. Panic threatened to rise up and overwhelm her, she was just a human for God’s sake, she didn’t know the first thing about this, any of this. Why were they looking at her like they expected her to pull off some kind of, well miracle?

Maybe because you are one her inner voice that sounded a lot like her own mother chided. And Chloe, with a confidence she did not feel in any part of herself, squared her shoulders and pulled herself up. This was what she was good at, maybe it was what she had been built for. Lonely universe or no lonely universe, and whether or not any of the damn angelic choirs cared, she was Chloe Decker of the LAPD and she was here to get justice for the victims. For Charlotte. For Cecilia. For the unknown and unnamed bodies Cain had left in his wake, the ones she wouldn’t know anything about but would still think of. The ones she was going to remember, the ones she was going to give long denied justice to.

“On the phone he was particularly concerned about his reception in hell. He wanted to make sure if he ended up there, he wouldn’t go just anywhere or handed over to just anyone.” Maze and Lucifer shared a look but Amenadiel remained calm, his peaceful presence normally frustrating but currently providing a balm for her frayed nerves. “He wants reassurance that if he goes there he will have a way around.”

“The absolute fucking audacity” Mazikeen snarled, cutting herself off from saying more with a look from Lucifer. Chloe felt as though the former arch-angel agreed with the sentiment though, a fire stirring in his normally warm and smiling face. His warm brown eyes had taken on a cold glint and it sent chills up Chloe’s spine to see more of the family resemblance with his mother, the hard cold edges, the ones without any kind of concept of mercy coming to the forefront. It had been hard originally to reconcile the man who threw ranch puffs at her during stake-outs with someone who flayed serial killers alive but she had no trouble believing it now. The same creature that stalked around on the other side of the table from her had been the same one who drove a blade in Cain’s breastbone without a second of hesitation or remorse.

Amenadiel, ever the peacemaker, seemed similarly disgusted. “What does he think he’s going to do, show up and tell a bunch of demons no?”

The corners of Maze and Lucifer’s mouths twitched up at the thought, seemingly thinking of something similar. “I would return to hell just to watch him try.” Lucifer purred, reminding her of a cat who had a mouse within its paws, and it made Chloe’s hair stand on edge.

And yet she wasn’t afraid of him. The being in front of her was terrifying, otherworldly and Chloe should be afraid. Very afraid. And while she felt on edge and her goosebumps pricked up, Chloe knew somewhere deep inside herself he wouldn’t hurt her. He’d never hurt an innocent. He’d told her that, in the aftermath of their very first meeting, that he would never do something unjust to an innocent human soul, he would never punish someone who didn't deserve it. The concept of fairness was more than just an obsession for him, it was how he defined his presence in the universe. She had believed him then, and she believed him now. It didn’t make being around him any easier, the reminders of what exactly he was, what he did and what he was capable of. She’d tried visiting Jimmy Barnes and stared at the madness that consumed the man, the never-ending fear, the desperation to put walls and walls between himself and Lucifer. The fact that Cain was trying to do the same but with walls made of humans was not lost on Chloe.

“It doesn’t matter what he does in hell when he gets there, he just needs to believe that it will go down the way he wants it to when he gets there.” Chloe didn’t know if she should feel proud or upset that her statement got a look of approval from Maze. “He feels trapped, he knows you won’t stop hunting him. He’s trying to negotiate a surrender, even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

“At least he isn’t dumb enough to ask to go to the Silver City” Amenadiel pointed out, trying to be included. Lucifer snorted, and Chloe wondered if he noticed the way it made Amenadiel set his shoulders up a little straighter, the way it made him open himself up just a little bit more. Despite being the eldest, Lucifer was clearly the authority here and him acknowledging Amenadiel's contribution had been important to Amenadiel. Chloe saw it but she was an outsider to the dynamics of the two of them, she’d have to ask him about it when this was all over. If it was ever over.

“Yeah that would be mommy dearest’s department.” Maze included and Chloe didn’t miss the way Lucifer’s nostrils flared. Note to self, there was some tension there. Chloe wondered if it was going to be enough of an impact on getting Dan and Ella back or if it was okay to let it lie until that happened. Then they could take up weeks of Linda’s time or until they lost their voices from screaming about their feelings.

“Does Cain know about her giving you that assignment?” Chloe wondered aloud, “It may be enough to make him change his endgame, if he feels cornered or that his fate is already determined he may do something rash. And for Ella and Dan’s sake we just can’t have that.” The weight made her shoulders bend in a bit, something that everyone at the table noticed. Amenadiel gave her a small smile, Maze gave her a nod than averted her eyes, as if witnessing Chloe’s moment of weakness was rude in demon and Lucifer looked at her with his normal self-peeking through the battle ready exterior.

“Mum’s the word on Mum.” Lucifer declared and Chloe marveled at how he was able to be so authoritative. It was the wrong time to be appreciating such parts of him but leadership suited him well, the authority coming from him naturally. Like he had eons of practice, well because he had. Lucifer had always been content to follow her lead, to let her chart their course but in this arena, he was clearly the leader. He had a commanding presence, an aura about him that demanded respect. It was part of what made him so damn beautiful.

“Current plan. Mazikeen and I return downstairs for a brief interlude to show we are taking his demands seriously.” Chloe tried to not notice how Mazikeen perked up at the word downstairs. “Amenadiel and Chloe will stay up here and attempt to track down Ella and Dan. You will not make contact if you find them, the more surprise we have the better. You will make sure to get proof of life for both of them and we will set up a location for a trade. If he makes any attempt to hurt them or flee deals off and we bring up a horde or two to hunt him down.” Chloe didn’t even want to know why a horde of demons made Mazikeen smile like that, with way too many teeth to be friendly or cause Amenadiel to frown.

“Brother you know you’re not”

“I don’t give a damn what I am supposed to do.” Lucifer cut in, icy tone. “I was told to capture Cain and put him in hell, not given any restrictions. We do this the right way and we avoid a Lazarus-style repeat. But no one goes near him without back-up and everyone in this room is always aware of the plan. No miscommunication. Which is why brother-“ Lucifer paused, as though the thought pained him “We need to set up a prayer link.”

Chloe didn’t bother to ask what a prayer link was because despite the name and look on Amenadiel’s face she could guess. “Right, whatever it is, we stay together and don’t let him divide us.”

Maze flushed slightly at the implication and before Chloe could reassure the demon she hadn’t meant it as a dig, hadn’t meant it in a negative way, Lucifer clapped his hands together. “Right, Maze and I will be off then. You should call an officer or two you trust, someone who isn’t Cain affiliated to stay here with Linda and the tiny human. Then you both go together to confirm Cain’s story and set up a meeting.”

Before Chloe could blink it seemed they had crossed back over the threshold of the front door and out into the night, leaving Chloe and Amenadiel without even closing the door. Trixie wandered around the corner holding a box of goldfish and looked sad that she had missed their take off. Linda seemed perfectly calm on the outside but when she didn’t think anyone was looking her face slipped and showed Linda felt the same helplessness that Chloe felt. And it was comforting then as Amenadiel managed to talk someone he had worked with and whose character he would vouch for to watch the house so they could officially start Cain-hunting, that someone else in the house felt the same was Chloe did. Small helpless and totally incapable of changing the events going on around them. Chloe kept thinking she had come to terms with Lucifer’s family and that she had begun to understand his rage at constantly feeling manipulated but every time she felt confident she understood something like this happened and sent her reeling even deeper into the darkness. Chloe felt similar to when she had begun to try ice skating, the moment she felt confident on her feet, even as wobbly as she was, but then when she tried to do anything with that new found confidence she fell flat on her ass.

* * *

It felt surreal driving with Amenadiel. He was not chatty and seemed perfectly content to stare outside into silence on the drive to Dan’s. Every little thing reminded her of how different the brother was to Lucifer, Lucifer would have complained that even though she was speeding around there were still plenty of road laws up for creative interpretation and been fiddling with the radio. Amenadiel made no comment about her driving, not even grabbing the side handle to mock her like Lucifer sometimes did, and didn’t even move to turn on the radio. She felt like she should at least talk to him but about what Chloe didn’t know. So, like with a lot of things lately, she winged it. No pun intended.

“So hell.” Chloe started, not even sure where she was going with it. “Cain really thinks he can wiggle out of it?”

The angel in her passenger seat chuckled darkly. It was unnatural and sent brief flashes of fear through her despite knowing it came from Amenadiel, the man who would jump in front of a train to save a human, any human. “I’d love to be there when he tries. Hell is-“ He stopped, almost as though he was unsure of his words and needed to choose them carefully “A different kind of beast altogether. It’s almost like a sentiment being in itself you know?”

Chloe did not know but made a hum of agreement anyway as she turned into Dan’s apartment complex. She didn’t give Amenadiel time to fully unbuckle before she was up and out of the car, going towards the walk-up. She felt a great sense of urgency and while a tiny part of Chloe hoped and prayed that when she opened the door she would find a very confused Dan, Chloe knew better. She’d heard his voice with Ella on the other end of the line, proof of life, Cain had said, drawing extra emphasis on the word life. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he had been implying and before Chloe could have even asked if they were hurt and needed medical attention or how Cain’s men got them, the line had ended.

Amenadiel appeared seemingly out of the darkness at her side, causing her to jump slightly and nearly drop the keys. “Lucifer would do unspeakable things to me if I let something happen to you,” the angel said in way of an apology and Chloe mentally filled the comment under the growing list of things to talk about when this crap ended. Chloe briefly wished for her gun when she swung the door open not sure what she would find on the other side.

It was the same as it had always been. Tidy but lived in, things arranged in a careful clutter on the counters and the table. The mail from the morning was on the dining room table along with a flyer from Trixie's school about a bake sale of some kind. The small hum of the fridge and air conditioning were the only sound in the apartment. Not for the first time Chloe felt overwhelmed by the seemingly pointlessness of it all, this chase. She felt like it wasn’t actually doing anything, she had always been in control with investigations but if nothing else the past few weeks had been a lesson to her control freak self just how much she didn’t control.

A small rustle from the bathroom put them both into high alert, Amenadiel stepping confidently in front of Chloe and for once she was happy to take the backseat to this one. Even more so when the bathroom door opened and an unfortunate familiar sight greeted her.

“Mom?” Amenadiel wondered aloud and for a moment it would be a race to see who could appear more shocked at the other’s presence. The goddess of angels put herself together faster, giving Amenadiel a dazzling smile and a significantly less dazzling one at Chloe.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were tracking down Cain with your brother?” she sounded exasperated, flustered even but Amenadiel didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy taking in the goddess in front of them and Chloe realized with a start this must be the first time he had seen her as her and not Charlotte Richards since her departure from ‘the place upstairs’ all that time ago.

“Looking for leads on where Cain took the humans.” Amenadiel took a few steps forward, any sense of his fight or flight instinct gone in a familiar presence. Lucky bastard. “Lucifer took Maze to hell to work on his demands in hell and Chloe and I are looking for Dan and Ella.” Amenadiel sounded as though Dan and Ella were the farthest thing from his mind at the moment though, drinking in his mother’s very aura.

“Lucifer went back to hell?” her voice went up an octave and was very sharp. Chloe couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows a bit, she sounded surprised. Maybe that made sense with how things with hell and Lucifer had started and ended. But it seemed like a foreign concept to her that he would return to work out the details of one of the more infamous to-be inmates. Chloe had learned that despite his whining, Lucifer did care about hell deep down. He cared about the inhabitants of it, the demons and the souls it contained, if only to make sure cosmic justice was delivered. He hadn’t gone into detail and Chloe had never pried but from a few odd comments between him and Maze and Chloe had guessed demons were even lower on the celestial priority list than humanity and that was saying something. Lucifer gave a damn about Maze, he gave a damn about her home and had been willing to go back to a burden he didn’t want if it meant saving Chloe's life. Amenadiel had been awful at running hell and Lucifer had it running like a finely tuned piano, even if he hated it, he was damn good at what he did and taking care of its inhabitants. How else would one get such fearsome loyalty from a demon, demons weren’t known for loyalty even in human tales she could only imagine what they had really been based off. “I just didn’t think he would, not like him.” the Goddess trailed off, looking a bit lost in thought for a few moments before noticing Chloe staring and zeroing in on her.

“You won’t find your ex or your obnoxiously cheery friend at their apartment and you won’t find any clues.” Chloe bristled a bit on Ella’s behalf and at the woman’s assessment of their skills. She bit back a retort, knowing pissing of the goddess of all creation was not a wise move. Not everyone is omnipotent or something like that, her brain supplied, whatever the word was. The Goddesses regarded them again, “there is a place downtown he seems to go to quite often, I can give you the address if you want to?” The sickly sweet tone made her teeth stand on edge and she was reminded of awful PTA moms who judged her being a working mother and of socialites who thought she should be below Lucifer’s notice.

“Why don’t you come with us?” Amenadiel supplied what Chloe was thinking, albeit in a much more hopeful sounding voice than she would have used. “If he is using that book of his he could have all kinds of nasty things to slow us down that wouldn’t affect you.”

“I would love to honey but I can’t. Thou shall not interfere and all. It’s a warehouse owned by Lexcorp, the one by Cherry and Rose. ” The Goddess replied and Chloe bit back the retort if that had really been such a great policy during things like the Holocaust. Amenadiel nodded along as though it was the most logical thing in the world and Chloe went to turn toward the door.

“Well thank you for the lead, we will need to go catch up on it. Come on Amenadiel” Chloe called and it seemed by speaking she broke the spell. The Goddess blinked out of existence and with it the chill Chloe felt in her vicinity. Amenadiel followed her out the door, the giant of a angel seemingly still a bit dazed. Chloe wondered idly if all of the universe was dazed by the Goddess and it was just Chloe who was immune to her charm, much in the same way she was immune to Lucifer’s. She shuddered remembering the compelled obedience of the Goddess and as the unlikely duo piled back into the car Chloe wondered again what had become of her life.

“I’ll let Lucifer know what we got, we should go straight to the area and try to set up a perimeter to see what we’re up against.” Amenadiel stated, mirroring his brother in confidence and belief in their ability to pull this off. Chloe knew she should feel more optimistic than she felt, they literally had the Goddess of creation, God and angels on their side, there was no way Cain was getting out of this one. So why didn’t that knot in her stomach unclench the closer they drove into downtown?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I wrote this in one shot over a few hours instead of studying for a midterm of mine like a good student I am. Thanks for reading and hanging on with me! Hopefully you like where we're going!


	13. Chapter 12

Lucifer had always thought he hated Hell. And for the most part that was true, it was a job he didn’t want and that he had detested. He had never wanted to be ruler of the universe or in charge, no that attribution was added to his story later. But hell had been a kingdom all the same. However, it wasn’t as though he had been thrown the keys to a new car on his 16th birthday like so many people in Los Angeles seemed to be. Oh no, Lucifer had needed to earn his kingdom and he paid for it, over and over in literal blood sweat and tears. When he’d been much younger and much more foolish he’d thought hell had been his father’s test, one that he had been determined to pass. Millenias of silence later had determined that to be a lie.

He pretended not to notice Mazikeen’s heart flutter as the site of obsidian came into view. His senses always ratcheted up in hell, one too many assassination attempts by demons who only saw him as his father’s son and nothing more had ensured that Lucifer would never fully relax in hell. It had taken a year or so on Earth for that muscle in his lower back to fully relax and he felt it painfully tighten again, his wings contracting inward slightly. He could feel her gasp as her own demon side came out, not curling inward as he did but pushing outward, demanding to be released. The self control she had clung on, the cracks of it showing her inner frustration and need for blood, fully shattered and the demon she was fully emerged in his bartender’s stead, something so terrifying and yet she had a grace about her other demons lacked. Maybe that was why she had been cast out originally, himself too pushy and thirsty for knowledge, for independence, and her too powerful and willing to challenge the status quo that was determined to keep her down.

“Home sweet home.” She remarked, trying to hide how happy she was to be in her element again for his sake and failing. For all of Lucifer’s time with her, he would never understand her attachment to this place. And, he reflected looking at her shining dark eyes, maybe he never would. Maybe it was the same way he had used to mention in the dark how he had longed to go home, and she missed some version of it that wasn’t actually in front of her. Lucifer knew hell was a creature of it’s own, all realms were actually. Earth just happened to be more quiet about it than hell did, but hell had never taken a shining to anyone quite like it had Lucifer and Mazikeen. The other demons had hated the pair for it. And wouldn’t you if your home suddenly moved beneath your feet to answer the call of someone you saw as lesser? Lucifer knew hell respected him, respected him in the same way a cat respects its human that is. Hell’s true love was for Mazikeen. 

Lucifer supposed it was just another cruel joke that his first real friend who saw him for who he truly was belonged in a place that Lucifer would never be at ease in.

Hell didn’t outwardly look any different than the last time he had been inside. The ash still rained from the sky, not as rain from clouds but from plumes off in the distance, where hell forged weapons, tools and monsters were born. The ash usually provided a calmness to the air, absorbing sound much in the same way snow did.

It was rather instantly obvious something was amiss due to cacophony of noise. Hell was always portrayed in stories as loud and terrifying, the screams of the damned, the laughing of monsters. Lucifer could do without that headache thank-you-very-much. So in Lucifer’s general area, silence had reigned. The fact the area was bustling with noise and activity meant something was wrong, Mazikeen could sense it too, squirming around to look him in the face.

“Don’t wiggle or I’ll drop you. Honestly”

Maze ignored his warnings, knowing for all their issues he would never drop her. Or let her stay dropped long enough to splatter anyway. Worry eclipsed her face, and it was nice to see it was somewhere other than in his stomach. That he was in fact not crazy for being ill at ease. They had both acknowledged the hell they returned to would not be the one they had left, that much was true, but to see evidence of it was another thing entirely.

They gently touched down on a high outcropping, Maze pulling her weaponry out in an instant, Lucifer himself pulling his nearly forgotten sword, his father’s apparent idea of a joke. He didn’t miss the uneasy glance Maze sent its way, nor the fact that in hell the sword appeared permanently blood-stained, the cool gleaming silver peaking out under a thin, ever wet sheen of red. It was heavenly in the worst possible way. She wisely choose to make no comment about the thing.

Perched up high they could see everything that was going on below and just what inspired the noise. And it was enough to make him wonder why, just why, he’d ever questioned his father back in the day.

Lucifer knew, despite his declarations of retirement and living on Earth forever, that he would probably be returned to hell eventually. He had never outwardly acknowledged that fact out loud and yet he had made contingency plans. Just enough to keep hell running relatively smoothly in his absence if he did manage to pull off the “I’m never going back” thing. And if he didn’t well, he’d be able to return and pick up right where he had left off.

Lucifer had gathered up the 13 tribes of demons and basically ordered them all to sign onto a constitution of sorts. He’d had the top lawmakers and framers of hell help him create it of course. After many years of long negotiations, the implementation of a talking stick, compromises and even a few amendments to previous compromises, Lucifer and Maze had left hell with a semi-functioning democracy of sorts. Or at least enough of a democracy that one tribe could not take over and ruthlessly murder one another. It had the unfortunate drawback of all major decisions needing to be unanimous, meaning basically nothing ever got done unless it was really truly important, and everything in hell continued to function. Souls still got special attention and each tribe had been allowed to specialize or split groups of sinners, things ran relatively autonomously. Famous sinners were put on a routine schedule, ensuring each tribe got their turn at defining the punishment of some truly hell-class evil and the last time he had been down here, he’d found it running beautifully. He had full veto of course, but promised to only use it when the demon way of life and hell itself was at sake. They had been content then to let him be a Prime Minster of sorts, a peacemaker who helped move along legislative processes and create an independent review panel of demons who would rule on any issue that may violate their rule of law. All in all it was working rather well all things considered.

It appeared it still did, they had just moved the place in which they made decisions into his former quiet place. As such, a loud debate was ongoing below on what exactly it would take to get the demons represented by Asmodeus just what it would take to get them to hand over a mass-murderer. Lucifer had never understood the appeal of serial killers but given this one inspired multiple copy-cats and violence, he was of particular interest.

Hence the screaming back and forth.

Honestly and Amenadiel had whined hell was hard to handle. Hell had been running self-sufficiently, all he’d had to do was check the gates and make sure no demons got any ideas about possession again. It wasn’t even hard. Hence his lack of patience for his brother’s incessant whining about how awful hell was. Had he ever had to talk demons hellbent on wiping each other out down? No of course not. Had Dad’s favorite ever had to remind them why going to Earth and wreaking havoc with the attitude of ‘they can’t get all of us’ was a bad idea? No never. Had Daddy’s favorite firstborn ever had to talk a demon out of giving a human more torture than the soul deserved? Absolutely not.

In short Amenadiel was whiny bitch and Lucifer hated his sibling’s weakness. Weakness that they all seemed to have, even his father. None of them had the stomach for hell, the ability to talk their way out of dangerous situations and reach impossible compromises. Hell would fall apart and descend into chaos within a day of their guidance and then there really would be tortured souls screaming everywhere instead of nice little cells all lined up in a row with doors clamped shut. With a withering sigh both he and Maze put their weapons away, both half relieved and half disappointed it wasn’t a brawl.

Lucifer gently grabbed Maze and dropped both himself and his right hand into the middle of the argument, ensuring a brief beat of silence before a whole new deafening wall of noise closed in around them from all sides.

_“My Lord you’re back.”_

_“It’s been so long, have you returned to stay?”_

_“Tell these motherfuckers our terms are more than reasonable and to hand him over to us. We’ll be doing a much better job-“_

_“Tell them this is not their affair to meddle with and-“_

He held up his hand and quiet came back. Lucifer half wanted to bury his hands in his hair and rub his temples, the shouting having already given him a headache, the voices and cries of demons were a particular kind of grating when they wanted to be, something they used to take full advantage of during debates. He didn’t though, not stupid enough to show weakness in front of a group that pounced on such things.

“I have come back briefly with a task that requires all of you to work together.”

Frowns all around. Demons were fiercely independent, except when it came to their own tribal hierarchies. Then any deviation could get you removed, as Mazikeen could attest. The idea of all of them working together for a goal had not been done since his constitution idea and then before that the unification of his system of government before it.

Maze, ever needing to prove her worth, flashed them a smile full of teeth. “You’ll like this one. Trust me.”

Maze’s reassurance was all the elder demons needed, the younger ones having outwardly fallen in line already at his declaration and Lucifer could almost see the gears turning in their heads trying to figure out what would make his lieutenant smile like that.

He smiled at them a smile he would only use on Earth for the worst scum he could find. “I will soon be bringing you the worst sinner of them all. I need everyone here to work together to devise a system of punishment for him. It needn’t be ready by the time I return with him, but I want nothing from each and every one of you but your best most devious ideas. Every demon in hell should have a contribution, even if it takes a millennia to get through them all. Get some ideas from some of the worst prisoner’s if you need to.”

The way they hung on his every word assured Lucifer they would not need to. He had been critiqued for being too soft, even when he had proved more than once emotional torture could be just as awful as the physical kind. Giving them free reign was unheard of except in the most unusual of cases. They’d thought that they had seen the end of his compassion when despots, those who sexually assault children and war criminals arrived at hell’s door, the fact that he had a new depth to give them ensured they would never call him too soft again nor ever critique his choice of treatment for a soul. Well not to his face or anywhere outside of their own minds anyway.

He jumped on a rock, bringing him even taller than his original six feet. It may not have been a throne in the traditional sense but it was as good as with the way they bowed their heads in his direction. There he towered above them, their king in a position he had fought hard for and won. One he had never wanted but worn beautifully.

“I’m giving you Cain.”

Everything from excited whispers, growls of anticipation and squeals of glee reverberated off the dark black walls, hell itself hummed along at the name of its incoming star resident and Lucifer could feel off in the distance, beyond special reinforced walls the wing created to house the worst of the worst begin to expand in the beginnings of a new cell creation.

“Now, I’ll be leaving Mazikeen in charge of preparations given she has a rather personal reason on getting to torture him first. But anything after that, well, let’s say may the most ingenious idea go after her.” Cheers broke out along with a flurry of excitement at the thought of anyone being able to follow after Mazikeen if they were proved worthy of doing so. Lucifer had made a promise when he took on hell that he would always keep his word to them, and he had never failed them.

Mazikeen shoot him a grateful glance at his official forgiveness, even though the words had already been passed between them, before being swarmed by a literal horde of demons determined to convince her of their ideas and designs. Actions always spoke louder than words with demons, something he was more comfortable with than heaven’s flighty and flowery promises. By giving her the first crack at Cain, to be the one to break him into hell, he was telling her that the whole incident was behind them. That he still trusted her as his oldest friend and knew she would do right by him, the Detective and the spawn when it mattered. He settled in to briefly watch the chaos unfolding before taking flight to prepare to return to Earth go nab the fucker.

Before taking on that final push though hell gently smacked him. Well for hell it was gentle, for Lucifer it was ungracefully landed flat on his ass in a dark wing of cells. The ash had accumulated so high here light was hard to come by, and even as he blasted the piles down with beams of light, the area still felt dark. The cells here were old, dusty and quiet. The souls in them had been there for many many years, demons had long abandoned the area in search for fresher, more resilient souls.

Turning to leave a beam of the dusty blue light from above made one door catch his eye. The only door that had been opened in the past few thousand years, his. The name Lucifer Morningstar was etched on it, the dark stone less weathered than the surrounding doors. The sight made him snort in amusement and unease. He was tempted to enter, just to rub in shadow-made Uriel’s face that Mum and Dad were getting along, before remembering the fact his mother had needed to rescue him. With a grimace he quietly changed the name on the door to read Uriel, something only someone who had been there would recognize, before firing off a missive to Maze to investigate the door ASAP. There had to have been a reason hell pointed it out to him but that reason had to wait.

He had a sinner to punish.

* * *

Something did not feel right.

Chloe had originally been skeptical, as she was with all things supernatural, of cops who claimed to have a gut feeling when things were about to go bad. She’d have to ask Lucifer if the whole “inner eye” and sixth sense thing was bullshit. She really should start a list she mused, before pulling out her phone and opening a note. She titled it “random things to ask angels” and filled it under that. Though not before adding that she wanted to know how the whole flood thing had really gone down.

They were sitting and staring at an abandoned warehouse. No lights, no movement. Other than a homeless guy with a nicer jacket than she had asking them for drug money, there was nothing going on this quiet street. Even for this part of Los Angeles, it was too quiet. Way too quiet.

“Hey Amenadiel, does this feel wrong to you?” she asked and saw something flicker across the angel’s face before his stoic expression returned. “I mean, maybe he’s moved on from here or is somewhere else by now.” She hadn’t meant to voice her doubt of his mother, regardless of Chloe’s own misgivings she did not think the woman would seriously hurt Amenadiel. She may hate Chloe and may have even tried to blow her up once, and she had thought Dan’s mother had been a handful, but Chloe knew she wouldn’t hurt her kids in the same way Chloe wouldn’t hurt Trixie.

“Well it doesn’t feel right.” She smiled at that, his admission that things felt off to a supernatural being enough to soothe the voice in her head that said she worried too much. “I’ll go scan the roof, look for signs of life, they won’t see me. If no one’s here, we’ll move on.” He smiled reassuringly and Chloe felt peace pass over her, wondering if it was an Amenadiel thing or she was just comforted by his words.

Chloe nodded, not even needing his instruction to stay in the car. Maze had helpfully left her a weapon, though privately Chloe didn’t know how much good it would do. Sure the knife was hell forged and could cut through anything, but Chloe had never been much of a knife fighter to begin with. Maybe she would ask him for lessons, surely he was a brilliant fighter with having someone who could fight like Maze deferring to his expertise.

And yet she found herself rolling the blade in her hands, unconsciously mimicking the demon woman, wondering idly if Lucifer and Maze had found anything interesting or out of place in hell. It was enough of a distraction she nearly jumped out of her skin when there was a bang on the back of the car, Father Kinley’s bloody white terrified face showing through the rearview mirror.

Scanning the area around her to make sure there were no other surprises she quickly unlocked the door and went to the back, keeping low in case there was something unpleasant nearby. The Father looked awful, crazed even. He eerily reminded her of Jimmy Barnes, his eyes brightly dilated and something crazy shone back at her. He was covered in blood, though most of it appeared to be from a cut on his forehead. He seemed unable to form words, instead gesturing at the cut on his hand and holding his side to stop what Chloe realized was a deep wound on his side from causing him to bleed out. She scanned the area nearby but found nothing, and she kept the knife brandished anyway just in case. 

“Stay right there, I’ll get something to help you.” She had pulled out her phone and begun to dial Amenadiel and Linda, setting her phone on the hood of the car while the phone began to dial. She had already reached into her jacket to pull out a feather from Amenadiel, knowing paramedics would have never gotten to them in time to stem the blood.

Chloe missed the explosive device strapped to the Father just under his outer robe in the shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I should be a bit more regular with updates now that life has slowed down. Also, I don't plan on switching POV in chapter again, this chapter just didn't feel complete without Chloe's piece. We'll be picking up with her next chapter. 
> 
> Also, I debated adding tags because of the end of the chapter but wasn't sure if it was too spoiler-y. So I didn't. If you think I should please let me know. All I have to say is we'll be spending some more time in hell from this point forward. But we'll make it back up, never fear ;-)


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